Frappe Books vs Beancount
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?
Frappe Books
Free desktop accounting for small businesses
VS
Beancount
Double-entry bookkeeping in plain text with a query language
| Feature | Frappe Books | Beancount |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Budgeting & Finance | Budgeting & Finance |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Language | TypeScript | Python |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal, source | binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 4,874 | ★ 5,881 |
| First released | 2020 | 2008 |
| Replaces | QuickBooks, Wave | QuickBooks, Xero |
Why pick each one
Choose Beancount if…
- Released under the GPL-2.0 license
- Mature project with 5.9k GitHub stars
- Written in Python
- Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
Frequently asked questions
Is Frappe Books or Beancount better?
Neither is universally better. Beancount has the larger community, while Frappe Books is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Frappe Books and Beancount free and open-source?
Yes. Frappe Books is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Beancount under GPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Frappe Books and Beancount with Docker?
Frappe Books: check the project docs for container support. Beancount: check the project docs for container support.