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Track expenses and budgets inside Claude without a SaaS subscription

Expense tools want a monthly fee and your bank credentials. The MCP Expense Tracker takes a third path: plain JSON and CSV under your home directory, driven entirely from chat. "Log 42.50 at the petrol station" writes the entry; "how much is left in the fuel budget this month" reads the ledger and does the arithmetic.

Budgets as envelopes

Set a monthly limit per category: "Set the software budget to 60 euros a month". During the month, the summary shows spend against each envelope, so overspend is visible on the 15th and not at reconciliation. Mileage is a first-class expense type, which matters for the tax log.

Receipts and categories

Attach receipt files to entries, and teach the categorizer once: "Coffee bars are always meals". Bank exports can be imported and categorized in bulk for reconciliation, and the whole ledger exports to CSV for the accountant or the spreadsheet.

One click, with no JSON. Download expense-tracker.mcpb from the latest release and open it in Claude Desktop. It runs on the Node runtime Claude Desktop ships with, so your own PATH and node version never come into it.

Or a URL, with nothing installed. /mcp/connect mints a free anonymous token and prints the ready line:

claude mcp add --transport http expense-tracker https://mcp.zovo.one/mcp/expense-tracker/t/<token>

Or from a clone, for a client with no bundle installer. Build once, then point the client at the built file:

git clone https://github.com/theluckystrike/mcp-servers.git
cd mcp-servers && npm install
npm run build -w packages/mcp-license -w servers/expense-tracker

claude mcp add --scope user expense-tracker -- node /absolute/path/to/mcp-servers/servers/expense-tracker/dist/index.js

Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf and Cline take the same two strings as JSON, in claude_desktop_config.json or the client's own MCP config file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "expense-tracker": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/mcp-servers/servers/expense-tracker/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

The npm packages are not published yet, so the npx form below returns a 404 today. It is kept because it is what that config becomes the day the publish lands, with nothing else changed; installing these servers when npx does not work yet has the whole picture.

claude mcp add expense-tracker -- npx -y @theluckystrike/mcp-expense-tracker

Questions

Where does my data live?

In plain JSON and CSV files under your home directory. No account exists, nothing syncs, and you can read the ledger with any text editor.

Can I set monthly budget limits?

Yes. Budget envelopes per category show spend versus limit in every summary, so variance is visible mid-month.

What about mileage?

Mileage entries are a first-class expense type with their own rate handling, and they flow into the same CSV export.

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