Beancount
Budgeting & FinanceDouble-entry bookkeeping in plain text with a query language
Replaces QuickBooks, Xero
Best No-Database Budgeting & Finance for self-hosting
The 7 best No-Database budgeting & finance you can self-host, ranked by community traction.
Hospitable Ledger
Budgeting & FinancePlain-text accounting toolkit and CLI
Replaces QuickBooks, Quicken
hledger-web
Budgeting & FinanceWeb interface for hledger plain-text accounting
Replaces QuickBooks, Quicken
ExpenseOwl
Budgeting & FinanceMinimal self-hosted expense tracker
Replaces Mint, Spendee
Beancount Import
Budgeting & FinanceSemi-automated transaction import for Beancount ledgers
Replaces Mint
hledger-flow
Budgeting & FinanceAutomated import pipeline for hledger plain-text accounting
Replaces QuickBooks import, Tiller
Costflow
Budgeting & FinanceNatural-language interface for plain-text accounting
Replaces Expensify, Mint
No apps match these filters.
At a glance
| App | Deploy effort | Difficulty | Min. RAM | License | ★ Stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beancount | Read-the-docs project | Hard | 128 MB | GPL-2.0 | 6,080 |
| Hospitable Ledger | Read-the-docs project | Hard | 64 MB | BSD-3-Clause | 6,053 |
| hledger-web | Read-the-docs project | Medium | 128 MB | GPL-3.0 | 4,765 |
| ExpenseOwl | Under-an-hour setup | Easy | 64 MB | MIT | 1,523 |
| Beancount Import | Read-the-docs project | Medium | 256 MB | GPL-2.0 | 474 |
| hledger-flow | Read-the-docs project | Hard | 128 MB | GPL-3.0 | 219 |
| Costflow | Read-the-docs project | Medium | 128 MB | MIT | 33 |
Quick picks
- Most adopted: Beancount (6,080 GitHub stars).
- Lightest footprint: Hospitable Ledger (from 64 MB RAM, against 256 MB for the heaviest here).
- Licensing: 2 of 7 use GPL-2.0; check the rest individually if you plan to modify and redistribute.
Every option here is open-source and self-hostable, tagged No-Database within the budgeting & finance category. Deploy effort is graded from published container recipes, not vendor claims — see the methodology.