Fava 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?
Fava
Web interface for Beancount plain-text accounting
VS
Hospitable Ledger
Plain-text accounting toolkit and CLI
| Feature | Fava | Hospitable Ledger |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Budgeting & Finance | Budgeting & Finance |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Language | Python | C++ |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal, source | bare-metal, binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 2,542 | ★ 6,011 |
| First released | 2016 | 2003 |
| Replaces | QuickBooks, GnuCash | QuickBooks, Quicken |
Why pick each one
Choose Hospitable Ledger if…
- Extremely portable data
- Scriptable and version-controllable
Frequently asked questions
Is Fava or Hospitable Ledger better?
Neither is universally better. Hospitable Ledger has the larger community, while Fava is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Fava and Hospitable Ledger free and open-source?
Yes. Fava is licensed under MIT and Hospitable Ledger under BSD-3-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Fava and Hospitable Ledger with Docker?
Fava: yes. Hospitable Ledger: check the project docs for container support.