Bridge Bank

Your EU bank transactions, inside Actual Budget. Automatically.

Bridge Bank connects to your EU bank via open banking and imports your transactions into a self-hosted Actual Budget instance once a day. It runs on your own machine — your financial data never touches any third-party server.

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What you get

• Flexible sync frequency — sync every 6, 12, or 24 hours, at a time you choose
• 2,500+ European banks — Revolut, N26, Monzo, Wise, Millennium BCP, Santander, ING, BNP Paribas, and more across 29 countries
• Multiple bank accounts — connect up to 2 bank accounts by default, each syncing to a different Actual Budget account. Need more? Purchase additional slots from the status page.
• Read-only, always — Bridge Bank can never move money or modify your account
• Pending transaction tracking — pending transactions are imported as uncleared and automatically confirmed when they settle
• Duplicate detection — Bridge Bank tracks every transaction ID so nothing gets imported twice
• Internal transfer linking — matching transfers between connected Actual accounts are marked as transfers, not income and expense
• Email notifications — an alert if something goes wrong, and a warning before your bank session expires
• Your data, your machine — bank data goes directly from Enable Banking to your machine, never our servers
• Lightweight — runs as a single Docker container
• Runs anywhere — supports x86, Raspberry Pi, and other ARM devices out of the box

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Requirements

• Docker and Docker Compose (runs on x86, Raspberry Pi, and other ARM devices)
• A free Enable Banking account
• A self-hosted Actual Budget instance
• A Bridge Bank licence key — buy one at bridgebank.app

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Quick start

New to self-hosting? Follow the step-by-step guide at bridgebank.app/getting-started — it walks you through everything from Enable Banking setup to running your first sync.

1. Get your licence key

Purchase at bridgebank.app. Your key is delivered to your email instantly.

2. Set up Enable Banking

Enable Banking is the regulated open banking provider that connects Bridge Bank to your bank.

1. Sign up at enablebanking.com
2. Go to API applications and click Register new application
3. Fill in the form:
   • Mode: Production (not Sandbox)
   • Application name: Bridge Bank
   • Allowed redirect URLs: https://bridgebank.app/callback
   • Application description: Connect Actual Budget with my bank
   • Email for data protection matters: your email address
   • Privacy URL: https://bridgebank.app/privacy
   • Terms URL: https://bridgebank.app/terms
4. Click Register — a .pem file will be saved to your Downloads folder. The filename matches your Application ID (e.g. aaaaaaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd-eeeeeeeeeeee.pem). Keep it safe — you'll need it in the setup wizard.
5. Click Activate by linking accounts on your application page
6. Select your country and bank from the dropdowns and click Link
7. Follow the steps to log in to your bank and approve read-only access — this activates your Enable Banking app

A consent of only 1 day here is normal. This step is Enable Banking's own consent, used only to activate your application. The connection that actually syncs is made later inside Bridge Bank, which asks your bank for up to 180 days; its expiry date shows next to each account on the Bank page.

The mode is permanent. Enable Banking asks for Sandbox or Production at the top of the registration form, and applications cannot be moved between the two afterwards. A Sandbox application only returns simulated test data, so it will never connect to your real bank. If you already registered one in Sandbox, register a second application in Production and use that one.

3. Install Bridge Bank

On your server, create the folder and download the compose file:

mkdir -p ~/bridge-bank/data && cd ~/bridge-bank
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DAdjadj/bridge-bank/main/docker-compose.yml

Start the container:

docker compose up -d

Open http://your-server-address:3002 in your browser. The setup wizard will guide you through the rest.

In Actual Budget, create a plain account and nothing more. Before you start the wizard, add an account in Actual for each bank (for example "Revolut") and leave it unlinked: don't set up bank sync, Enable Banking or GoCardless inside Actual. Bridge Bank makes the bank connection itself, and if Actual is also linked to the bank, every transaction comes in twice. The wizard asks for this account's name, which must match Actual exactly.

Local SMTP relays

Bridge Bank defaults to STARTTLS on port 587 for common hosted providers. For a trusted local relay on port 25, set these environment variables on the bridge-bank service:

environment:
  - NOTIFY_EMAIL=you@example.com
  - SMTP_HOST=mail-relay
  - SMTP_PORT=25
  - SMTP_SECURITY=none
  - SMTP_AUTH=false
  - SMTP_FROM=bridge-bank@home.lan

SMTP_SECURITY accepts starttls, ssl, or none. For a relay that uses STARTTLS with a self-signed certificate, keep SMTP_SECURITY=starttls and set SMTP_TLS_VERIFY=false.

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Setup wizard

The browser-based wizard walks you through five steps:

1. License — enter your key to activate Bridge Bank on this machine
2. Actual Budget — enter your Actual Budget URL, password, and Sync ID
3. Notifications — set your email and SMTP credentials
4. Sync — choose your sync frequency (every 6, 12, or 24 hours) and start date
5. Bank — upload your Enable Banking .pem file (App ID is filled automatically from the filename), then connect your bank via OAuth. You choose which Actual Budget account each bank syncs to.
6. Status — view sync history, manage bank connections, check for updates

You can connect up to 2 bank accounts by default. Each bank syncs to a different Actual Budget account (e.g. Revolut → "Revolut", N26 → "N26"). To add a second bank, go to the Bank tab and search for another bank.

If your bank returns several accounts in one authorisation, select all the ones you want on the account screen and name an Actual Budget account for each. Connecting them one at a time costs one authorisation each, and some banks (Openbank NL among them) allow only one active connection, so authorising a second time silently revokes the first.

Once complete, Bridge Bank runs silently in the background and syncs your transactions every day at the time you chose.

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First sync and duplicates

On the first sync, Bridge Bank will import all transactions from the start date you set in the wizard. If you set a past date and already have those transactions in Actual Budget from another source, you may see duplicates — just delete the extras manually. This will only happen once. From the second sync onwards, Bridge Bank tracks every transaction ID and will never import the same transaction twice.

To avoid duplicates entirely, set the start date to today when going through the wizard.

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How it works

Your bank
   ↓  (read-only OAuth, Enable Banking)
Bridge Bank (running on your machine)
   ↓  (Actual Budget API)
Your Actual Budget instance
   ↓  (SMTP)
Your inbox  ← alert emails

On each sync run, Bridge Bank:

1. Validates your licence key
2. Fetches transactions since the last sync from Enable Banking
3. Filters out any transaction IDs already imported
4. Writes new transactions to Actual Budget
5. Updates any previously pending transactions that have since settled
6. Links matching internal transfers between connected Actual accounts
7. Logs the result and sends an alert email if something went wrong

Per-bank options

Each connected bank has two toggles on its card on the Banks page:

• Only sync booked transactions (skip pending) — leaves pending transactions alone and imports each one when the bank books it.
• Use the transaction date instead of the booking date — for banks that book a payment a day or more after it happens. KBC (BE) books a Friday evening payment on the Monday, so without this its transactions arrive in Actual dated later than the banking app shows. Transactions already imported keep the date they were imported with.

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Session renewal (every ~180 days)

Enable Banking requires you to re-authorise access roughly every 6 months. If you configured email notifications, you will receive a warning before expiry.

To re-authorise, go to the Bank tab in the Bridge Bank web UI and click Re-authorise bank.

If an account is left on an older connection that your newest connection to the same bank also covers, or the bank starts refusing that older connection, the Bank tab flags it and offers Re-bind to the newest connection, which moves it onto the connection that still works, with no new bank login. Accounts a bank keeps on separate connections by design, such as a Revolut personal and business profile, are left as they are.

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Updating

Click Check for updates on the Status page. Bridge Bank will pull the latest version and restart automatically.

Or run manually:

docker compose pull && docker compose up -d

Running your own Watchtower too? Current Watchtower versions delete duplicate instances on the same Docker host, which can remove bridge-bank-watchtower and with it in-app updates. The compose file gives Bridge Bank's Watchtower its own scope so both can coexist. Older installs get this added automatically after updating, with a backup of the original file, unless the file has been customised. To add it by hand, add to both services in docker-compose.yml:

    labels:
      - com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.scope=bridge-bank

and to the environment: list of the watchtower service:

      - WATCHTOWER_SCOPE=bridge-bank

then run docker compose up -d.

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License deactivation

Each licence key supports up to 2 machine activations. To move Bridge Bank to a new machine, go to the Status page in the web UI and click Deactivate license before reinstalling.

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License

MIT + Commons Clause. Free to self-host for personal use. You may not sell, sublicense, or offer Bridge Bank as a competing service.

Built by David Alves.