SHSelfHostIndex

Cashew Self-Host vs Hospitable Ledger

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted budgeting & finance options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
CA Cashew Self-Host Self-hosted sync server for personal budgeting VS HO Hospitable Ledger Plain-text accounting toolkit and CLI
FeatureCashew Self-HostHospitable Ledger
CategoryBudgeting & FinanceBudgeting & Finance
LicenseMITBSD-3-Clause
LanguageDartC++
Setup difficultyEasyHard
Min. RAM256 MB64 MB
Deploymentdocker, sourcebare-metal, binary, source
GitHub stars★ 4,533★ 6,011
First released20222003
ReplacesYNAB, MintQuickBooks, Quicken

Why pick each one

Choose Cashew Self-Host if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Active community (4.5k GitHub stars)
Cashew Self-Host details

Choose Hospitable Ledger if…

  • Extremely portable data
  • Scriptable and version-controllable
Hospitable Ledger details

Frequently asked questions

Is Cashew Self-Host or Hospitable Ledger better?

Neither is universally better. Hospitable Ledger has the larger community, while Cashew Self-Host is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are Cashew Self-Host and Hospitable Ledger free and open-source?

Yes. Cashew Self-Host is licensed under MIT and Hospitable Ledger under BSD-3-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Cashew Self-Host and Hospitable Ledger with Docker?

Cashew Self-Host: yes. Hospitable Ledger: check the project docs for container support.

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