PocketRoot
Self-hosted personal finance for the UAE
statuslive
stackExpo + React Native, expo-sqlite, TanStack Query + Zustand
users2,000+
revenuepaying subscribers
teamsolo
updated2026
ExpoReact NativeSQLiteOffline-first
01 / / the problem
Expat finances in the UAE do not fit tools built for other markets. End-of-service gratuity, Zakat, and the monthly remittance home are the three numbers that decide the year, and mainstream budgeting apps model none of them. PocketRoot is built around those three, and it is self-hosted — the household's ledger stays on infrastructure the household controls, rather than in someone else's analytics pipeline.
02 / / what i built
→Income, expense and transfer tracking across multiple wallets
→Budgets, savings goals, vaults and a debt payoff planner
→UAE-specific calculators: end-of-service gratuity, Zakat, remittances
→AI receipt scanning, plus an agent that answers questions about your ledger
→Shared household accounts with settle-up
→Subscription tracking and renewal reminders
→Scenario planning and forecasting
→Accountant-ready export
→Offline-first mobile app — every write queues locally and syncs on reconnect
→Free tier, with Plus and Premium plans in AED
03 / / how i built it
Expo + React Native
One codebase shipping to both iOS and Android
expo-sqlite
Local cache and a durable write queue, so the app works with no signal
TanStack Query + Zustand
Server cache and local UI state kept in separate, boring layers
expo-secure-store
Session tokens live in the device keychain, not AsyncStorage
04 / / the product
05 / / what's next
Next on the roadmap:
→Bank feed imports to reduce manual entry
→Multi-currency holdings for households paid in more than one currency
→Native widgets for at-a-glance balances