Frequently Asked Questions

Email us at support@betterbudgetapp.com and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

No. BetterBudget is completely offline-first. Your data never leaves your machine — no cloud, no servers, no tracking.

Yes. Visit the Manage License page to transfer your license to a new machine.

The Express backend may have failed to start. Try:

1. Close the app completely
2. Delete %APPDATA%/BetterBudget/budget.db.bak if it exists
3. Relaunch the app

If the problem persists, the database may be corrupted. Delete %APPDATA%/BetterBudget/budget.db and restart (this erases data — export a backup first if possible).

The app is not code-signed, so Windows shows a warning on first run. Click More info → Run anyway. This only appears once per version.

The embedded Express server failed to start or is on a different port than expected.

1. Close all instances of BetterBudget
2. Relaunch the app
3. If the issue persists, check if another app is blocking ports on 127.0.0.1

Auto-update only works with the NSIS installer version, not portable. Go to Preferences > About > Check for Updates to manually trigger. Make sure you have internet connectivity.

Verify the license key is entered exactly as provided (no extra spaces). The license is validated offline using RSA-4096 — no internet is needed after first activation. If your machine changes significantly (new hardware), you may need a new license.

After importing, the app must fully restart to load the new database. The import should automatically restart the app. If it doesn't, close and reopen the app manually.

Try these steps:

1. Check %APPDATA%/BetterBudget/ for a corrupted budget.db
2. Try renaming budget.db to budget.db.old and relaunching (creates fresh database)
3. If the crash is related to licensing, delete license.dat and re-activate