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Commerce & Finance · Accounting & Expense Management

Bookkeeping

10 paid against 8 free you can run yourself.

Paid against free › Commerce & Finance › Accounting & Expense Management › Bookkeeping · Money on Repo Radar

Bookkeeping tools record a business's transactions, reconcile them with the bank and produce the reports an accountant and the tax office need. Established cloud products (QuickBooks Online, Xero, FreshBooks, Wave, Zoho Books, Patriot and FreeAgent) combine bank feeds, invoicing and bills; newer AI-first tools (Puzzle, Digits and Kick) categorise and reconcile automatically and aim at a faster month-end close. On the open-source side, GnuCash, Bigcapital, Akaunting and LedgerSMB are complete small-business accounting apps; hledger, Beancount and Ledger keep books in plain-text files, with Fava as a web interface; ERPNext covers accounting inside an ERP. Marks come from vendor pricing pages and project READMEs as of 19 October 2026; nothing was tested hands-on.

Paid 10 reviewed

Prices and free tiers as checked, dated on each review.

QQuickBooks

Cloud accounting software for small businesses.

$38free tierXXero

Cloud accounting software for small businesses.

$27FFreshBooks

Cloud accounting for small businesses to invoice, track expenses, and get paid.

$23free tierWWave Financial

Financial management suite for small businesses and solopreneurs.

$19free tierZZoho Books

Cloud accounting for small and micro businesses.

$15free tierPPatriot Software

Online accounting and payroll software for small businesses.

$20free tierFFreeAgent

Cloud accounting for UK small businesses, freelancers, landlords, and accountants.

free tierPPuzzle

AI-native real-time accounting software for startups and accounting firms.

$30free tierDDigits

AI-native accounting with automated bookkeeping, financials, bill pay, and invoicing.

$65free tierKKick

AI-powered accounting platform for accountants and business owners.

$40free tier

Free 8 direct · 9 related

Free to use. You run it on your own server.

Direct alternatives

They do this job.

ERfrappe/erpnext

Free and Open Source Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

★ 40.4kFreeBEbeancount/beancount

Double-entry bookkeeping written as a plain text file, with a command-line program that checks it and reports on it.

★ 6.1kFreeLEledger/ledger

Double-entry accounting from a plain text file, run from the command line, with no database of any kind.

★ 6kFreeHLsimonmichael/hledger

It keeps double-entry accounts in a plain text file and prints reports from it.

★ 4.8kFreeGNgnucash/gnucash

Desktop double-entry accounting for a person or a small business.

★ 4.4kFreeBIbigcapitalhq/bigcapital

Double-entry business accounting you host yourself, with invoices and financial reports.

★ 3.9kFreePAananthakumaran/paisa

Charts and reports over a plain-text money ledger you already keep.

★ 3.2kFreeLEledgersmb/LedgerSMB

Self-hosted double-entry accounting with ordering, invoicing, stock and timecards.

★ 570Free

Related alternatives

A second choice: they cover part of this job or are a building block for it.

ACactualbudget/actual

It makes every amount of money get a job before it is spent.

★ 29.6kFreeFIfirefly-iii/firefly-iii

A personal finance manager you run yourself, with budgets, categories and reports.

★ 24.9kFreeINInvoiceNinja/invoiceninja

Quotes, invoices, payments, projects and time tracking in one application you install, under a licence that forbids reselling it as a service.

★ 10.3kFreeAKakaunting/akaunting

Self-hosted invoicing and expense tracking, with the double-entry accounting sold separately as an add-on.

★ 10.1kFreeFAbeancount/fava

A website for a plain text accounting file, with balances, charts and filters.

★ 2.6kFreeMOmoneymanagerex/moneymanagerex

A desktop program for household accounts, budgets and spending, saved in one local file.

★ 2.3kFreeINInvoiceShelf/InvoiceShelf

Invoicing and expense tracking you host yourself, with several currencies and customers.

★ 1.9kFreeFOFOSSBilling/FOSSBilling

Self-hosted recurring billing, invoicing and customer accounts for a small service business, and the only maintained open-source option of its kind.

★ 1.7kFreeSOSolidInvoice/SolidInvoice

Self-hosted quoting and invoicing with recurring bills, multiple currencies and card payment.

★ 977Free

Feature by feature

Every paid tool and free repository we compared, marked against the same features.

✓has itPartlysome plans or extra work—confirmed not available?not confirmed✓the vendor's claim onlypricingClick a mark for its note and source

Paid · 10Free · 10
Featuresimonmichael/hledgerbeancount/beancountledger/ledgergnucash/gnucashbigcapitalhq/bigcapitalakaunting/akauntingledgersmb/LedgerSMBfrappe/erpnextbeancount/favaananthakumaran/paisa
Starts at$38 per month (Simple Start)$27 per month (Early)$23 per month (Lite)$19 per month (Pro)$15 per month billed annually (Standard)$20 per month (Accounting Basic)£33 per month (limited companies)$30 per month (Starter)$65 per month (Essentials)$40 per month billed annually (Basic)GPL-3.0GPL-2.0BSD-3-ClauseGPL-3.0AGPL-3.0BSLGPL-2.0GPL-3.0MITAGPL-3.0
Data in
Bank feeds or transaction importBring bank and card transactions in automatically or from files.
Automation
Automatic categorisationTransactions are categorised by rules or AI.
Bookkeeping
Bank reconciliationMatch the books to bank statements.
Sales
InvoicingCreate and send invoices to customers.
Purchases
Bills and payablesRecord and pay supplier bills.
Data in
Receipt captureSnap or upload receipts and attach them to transactions.
Tax
Sales tax trackingTrack sales tax, VAT or GST on transactions.
Bookkeeping
Multi-currencyRecord transactions in several currencies.
Reporting
Financial reportsProfit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow.
Bookkeeping
Accrual accountingAccrual-basis books, not only cash.
Reporting
Projects, classes or departmentsTrack income and costs by project, class or department.
Collaboration
Multiple users and accountant accessInvite team members or an accountant with set permissions.
Payroll
PayrollRun payroll in the same product or as an add-on.
Pricing
Free tierA free plan for small businesses.
Ownership
Self-hosting or local dataRun it yourself or keep the books in local files.
Licence
Open sourceSource published under an open or source-available licence.

Excluded candidates

Looked at, and left out of the comparison, with the reason.

Paid apps

  • BenchBench sells bookkeeping done for you by its bookkeepers, with bookkeeping and tax plans. It is a service rather than software you keep the books in.Source
  • PilotPilot sells bookkeeping, tax and CFO services for startups and small businesses. It is a service provider rather than bookkeeping software.Source

Repositories

  • frappe/booksThis Electron and Vue edition of Frappe Books is archived and has reached end of life. Its README says it is superseded by frappe/frappe-books.Source
  • frappe/frappe-booksThe new Frappe Books on the Frappe Framework was created on 28 August 2026, has about 45 stars and no release yet. It is too early to compare.Source
  • firefly-iii/firefly-iiiFirefly III describes itself as a personal finances manager. It is for household money rather than business bookkeeping.Source
  • actualbudget/actualActual is a local-first personal finance and budgeting app. It does envelope budgeting rather than business double-entry bookkeeping.Source
  • invoiceninja/invoiceninjaInvoice Ninja is a source-available invoice, quote, project and time-tracking app. It covers invoicing, not a general ledger.Source
  • odoo/odooOdoo is a full suite of business apps, of which accounting is one. ERPNext (G8) represents the ERP route here with a GPL-3.0 licence.Source
  • KDE/kmymoneyKMyMoney is a personal finance manager, and its GitHub repository is a mirror with issues turned off. It targets household money rather than a business.Source
  • mayswind/ezbookkeepingezBookkeeping is a self-hosted personal finance app despite its name. It records personal spending rather than business double-entry books.Source
  • Dolibarr/dolibarrDolibarr is an ERP and CRM package for companies. Accounting is one module, and ERPNext (G8) already covers the ERP route.Source
  • vas3k/TaxHackerTaxHacker is a self-hosted AI app that analyses receipts, invoices and transactions. It prepares data for accounting rather than keeping double-entry books.Source

Gaps

What the research could not settle from the vendors' own pages.

What vendors don't publish

  • Most vendors lead with introductory discounts (50% or 80% off for months, a first month at a tenth of the price); this report records the regular prices, so first-year cost is lower than shown.QuickBooks, Xero, FreshBooks, Patriot Software · checked 2026-10-19 · source 1 · source 2 · source 3 · source 4
  • Plan limits use different units (users, billable clients, invoices and bills per month, transactions per year, seats), so plans with the same price are not equivalent.QuickBooks, Xero, FreshBooks, Kick · checked 2026-10-19 · source 1 · source 2 · source 3 · source 4
  • FreeAgent's captured page shows UK prices in pounds for limited companies; prices for other business types and countries were not captured.FreeAgent · checked 2026-10-19 · source 1
  • Digits lists its Pro plan at $250 a month as coming soon, so its features and availability are not yet published.Digits · checked 2026-10-19 · source 1

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