Local-first, by design
Your money lives on your computer — not in someone’s cloud.
GlidePath Money is a desktop app. Your financial file is a folder of plain files on your own machine, and the planning math runs there too. There’s no bank-login aggregator connection and no cloud copy of your transactions — so the file you plan from is the same file you can open, copy, back up, and inspect. Everything else — the visible math, the version you keep — stands on that foundation.
What “local-first” honestly means.
It doesn’t mean nothing ever touches the internet. It means your financial file stays local by default. Two calls are required — a license check and an update check — and every other cloud feature is one you turn on, each scoped to exactly what it needs.
A finance app shouldn’t promise total isolation it can’t keep. So here’s the honest line drawn down the middle — what stays on your machine, and what leaves only when you choose it.
Stays on your machine
Your transactions, balances, accounts, holdings, and the whole planning engine — net worth, retirement Monte Carlo (your plan run across hundreds of market paths), taxes, debt cliffs. Importing a CSV or using the extension doesn’t send your data to us.
What leaves — and what it sends
Two calls are required: a license check (your key + a device id, to confirm your purchase) and an update check (just the app version). Everything else is opt-in — the AI helper (your typed question + the page name, never your balances or accounts), AI categorize (a transaction’s payee, amount, date and type — not account names or balances), and a price refresh (only the ticker symbols you hold). See exactly what each sends →
Always yours to inspect
Because the file is plain and local, you can open it, back it up, export it, and move it. You’re never locked behind a vendor’s account-connection layer to keep your own history useful.
Local-first extends to the OS, too: GlidePath runs natively on Windows and Linux (.deb and universal tarball). Get the Linux build →
Why the default matters.
Most finance apps route through an aggregator like Plaid: depending on the bank, it receives credentials or an access token, and your transaction history is processed on its servers. Local-first flips the question from “which accounts can this service reach?” to “which files did I bring in, and what did the app do with them?” — a question you can actually answer. See exactly what leaves and when →
The honest tradeoff.
No aggregator means no fully-automatic background sync. You capture transactions with a one-click browser extension or a CSV every week or two. That is a deliberate trade — and a ten-minute monthly check-in you actually do tends to be the part that changes how you handle money, not a feed you stop noticing.
Local-first, and a full planner.
$129 desktop license for Personal, $199 for Personal + Business. Your financial file stays local by default — and you still get retirement, tax, debt, equity, and business planning, with every major number explained in plain English.
GlidePath shows you the math — for your specific situation, talk to a fiduciary advisor or CPA.