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Fly.io

In order to deploy Actual to Fly.io, you’ll need to use their command line interface from a terminal program. If you’ve never used a terminal before, don’t worry! We’ll walk you through every step of the process.

Setup​

Creating a Fly.io Account​

note

Fly's pricing structure has changed as of Jan 25, 2024. New accounts are now gifted $5 credit. That $5 credit is only spent when exceeding the free allowances for apps. This is called the 'Hobby Trial' plan.

If you create an additional organisation from an existing account on a 'Hobby Trial' plan, that organisation will directly start on the 'Hobby' plan, which costs $5 per month as a base rate + usage outside of the free allowance limits. This has been confirmed by Fly staff via their forum.

You can therefore still sign up and host your Actual Budget instance with Fly for free, as the usage will not exceed the free allowances.

To begin, you’ll need to sign up for an account. Go to fly.io and click “Get Started,” then fill in the form. Note that Fly requires that credit card details for sign up. See their docs on how they use credit cards for more information.

Accessing the fly command line tool​

There are two ways to access the fly command line tool. You can either install it on your local machine, or you can use the web-based terminal that Fly provides. We recommend using the web-based terminal, as it’s the easiest way to get started. However, if you run into issues with the web-based terminal, you can always install the fly command line tool on your local machine.

Web-based terminal​

Go to https://fly.io/terminal/ and click “Launch Web CLI” at the bottom of the page. You may be asked to log into Fly.

Create a new folder named actual by typing in this command once the /app/bin $ prompt appears. Once you’ve typed in the command, press the Enter key on your keyboard.

mkdir actual; cd actual

Your terminal should look like this if you’ve done everything correctly:

/app/bin $ mkdir actual; cd actual
/app/bin/actual $

Local installation​

If you prefer to install the fly command line tool on your local machine, you’ll need to start by opening a command line terminal on your computer.

  • Windows: Open the Start menu and search for “PowerShell.” Click on the “PowerShell” app to open it.
  • macOS: Open the “Terminal” app from the Utilities folder in your Applications folder.
  • Linux: Open your terminal app of choice.

Next, follow the instructions to install the fly command line tool. When entering the commands, make sure not to include the $ character at the beginning of each line.

Detailed instructions with screenshots for Windows

Note: the exact commands you’ll need to run may have changed, check the website linked above to make sure you have the latest ones.

  1. Open up PowerShell on your local machine and paste the following command into the window:

    iwr https://fly.io/install.ps1 -useb | iex

  2. Flyctl should start installing

  3. Once done you should get a message saying Run flyctl --help to get started:

Detailed instructions with screenshots for macOS

Note: the exact commands you’ll need to run may have changed, check the website linked above to make sure you have the latest ones.

Additionally, you might get an error such as command not found: fly when you try to use the fly command later. If that happens, you’ll need to change the fly part of the command to ~/.fly/bin/fly instead.

  1. In the Finder, choose “Go → Utilities” from the menu bar.

  2. Scroll down in the list until you find “Terminal.” Double-click on it to open it.

  3. A window should pop up that will look a bit like this. Note that some of the text may be different, or you may see the last line ending with a $ instead of a %. Both of those are normal.

  4. Type or paste the following command to start the install. Make sure you press the Enter key on your keyboard after you’ve typed it in.

     curl -L https://fly.io/install.sh | sh

  5. Once that has finished, you should see something like this:

Logging into Fly.io​

Type fly auth login and press enter to open your browser and log your terminal into Fly.io.

Configuring the app​

Now that you’ve gotten the CLI set up, you’re ready to deploy your app to Fly.io. First, you’ll need our template Fly configuration:

Web-based terminal​

  1. Type in (or copy-paste) the command cat > fly.toml and press enter. Your cursor should move to a new blank line.
  2. Copy the contents of the fly.toml template file below and paste it into the terminal.
  3. Hit return on your keyboard so your cursor is at the beginning of a new line.
  4. Press control+d on your keyboard to save the file. (Use the “control” key even on macOS! Terminals are weird)
Click to expand fly.toml template
fly.toml
[env]
  PORT = "5006"
  TINI_SUBREAPER = "1"

[experimental]
  auto_rollback = true
  cmd = ["node", "--max-old-space-size=180", "app.js"]

[mounts]
  source="actual_data"
  destination="/data"

[[services]]
  http_checks = []
  internal_port = 5006
  processes = ["app"]
  protocol = "tcp"
  script_checks = []

  [services.concurrency]
    hard_limit = 25
    soft_limit = 20
    type = "connections"

  [[services.ports]]
    force_https = true
    handlers = ["http"]
    port = 80

  [[services.ports]]
    handlers = ["tls", "http"]
    port = 443

  [[services.tcp_checks]]
    grace_period = "10s"
    interval = "15s"
    restart_limit = 0
    timeout = "2s"

[[vm]]
  cpu_kind = "shared"
  cpus = 1
  memory_mb = 256

Local terminal​

  1. Create a new folder somewhere on your computer. You can call it whatever you want.
  2. Download the template fly.toml file by clicking here and move it into the folder you just created.
  3. Switch back to your terminal and navigate to the folder you just created.
    • On macOS, drag the folder from Finder to Terminal and hold the command key when dropping it into the terminal window.
    • On Windows, type cd, followed by a space, and then enter the full path (e.g. starting with C:\) to the folder you created. You can find the path in Explorer.
    • On Linux, use the cd command.

Deploying the app​

Now that you’ve got the configuration file set up, you’re ready to deploy your app to Fly.io. To do so, run the following commands. Wait for each command to finish before running the next one.

First, tell Fly about Actual:

fly launch --image actualbudget/actual-server:latest

This command will ask a series of questions:

  • “An existing fly.toml file was found. Would you like to copy its configuration to the new app?” Type y and press enter to use the config file we’ve provided.
  • “Choose an app name (leave blank to generate one)” Your app will be available online at https://the-name-you-choose.fly.dev. You can choose any name you want, but it must be unique. If you’re not sure what to choose, you can leave it blank and Fly will generate a random name for you. Either type the name and press enter, or just press enter.
  • Choose a region for deployment This is the physical location where the server will be set up. You can choose any region you want, but we recommend choosing the one closest to you. Use the up and down arrow keys to pick a region, then press enter to choose the highlighted option.
  • Would you like to set up a Postgresql database now? Type n and press enter to skip this step.
  • Would you like to set up an Upstash Redis database now? Type n and press enter to skip this step.
  • Would you like to deploy now? We’re not quite done yet! Type n and press enter. We’ll deploy the app once we’re done.

Next, we’ll need to set up a “volume,” a place Fly can store your data so it doesn’t get lost when you restart or upgrade the server. To do so, run the following command:

fly volumes create actual_data

You may receive a warning message:

  • “Warning! Individual volumes are pinned to individual hosts. You should create two or more volumes per application. You will have downtime if you only create one. Do you still want to use the volumes feature?” Actual is only designed to work with one volume, and downtime should only happen when you are manually updating Actual in the future. Type y and press enter to continue.

You may be asked to pick a region. Select the same one you chose for the main server, if asked.

It may take a few seconds to create the volume. Once that’s done, you’re ready to deploy! Run this command to deploy your app:

fly deploy

The deploy can take a couple of minutes. Once it finishes, you’ll see a message like this:

No machines in group app, launching a new machine
  Machine 148ed726c17298 [app] update finished: success
Finished launching new machines
Updating existing machines in 'some-app-1234' with rolling strategy
  Finished deploying

Visit your newly deployed app at https://some-app-1234.fly.dev/

You can now visit your very own instance of Actual by opening the link on the last line of the output.

Configuring Actual​

Now that Actual has been launched, you should now be able to navigate to Actual using the URL provided by the Fly command above earlier.

Forgot the URL? Here’s how to find it

If you forget the URL, you can always find it by opening https://fly.io/dashboard in a browser. Click on the application you created:

Once you are in there, you should see Hostname section under Application Information - click the link

This will now open Actual so we can start configuring it.

  1. Set a password - remember this, you will need it in the future.

  2. You’ll see a welcome screen. Either click “Import my budget” to import your budget from YNAB or the subscription version of Actual, or click “Start fresh” to create a blank budget file.

  3. If everything went well you should then be taken to your very first budget.

Actual is now up and running. Congratulations! Consider checking out our tour next.

Updating Actual​

When updates to Actual are released, you’ll need to re-deploy your app to get the latest version.

Web-based terminal​

Go to https://fly.io/terminal/ and click “Launch Web CLI” at the bottom of the page. You may be asked to log into Fly.

Run the following command, changing the your-app-name part to the name you chose when you first deployed Actual:

fly deploy --image actualbudget/actual-server:latest --app your-app-name

For example, if your copy of Actual was available at https://spring-firefly-8368.fly.dev/, you would run:

fly deploy --image actualbudget/actual-server:latest --app spring-firefly-8368

Local terminal​

Open a terminal window and navigate to the folder where you set up Actual. Run the following command:

fly deploy

Frequent Issues​

  • Q. I have deployed actual to Fly.io but I am being charged, why is this?

    A. While we wouldn’t know for certain without seeing your configuration, it is likely that during deployment you created a Postgres database. Actual doesn’t need this so you can just delete it and charges should then stop. If you're unsure, please reach out to us.

  • Q. How can I try out a beta/unstable version of Actual?

    A. We publish unstable releases of Actual every day. These versions may have known or unknown issues that could corrupt your budget. If you’d like to try them out, follow the instructions to update above, but change actualbudget/actual-server:latest to actualbudget/actual-server:edge.