Grisbi 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?
Grisbi
Lightweight personal accounting application
VS
Hospitable Ledger
Plain-text accounting toolkit and CLI
| Feature | Grisbi | Hospitable Ledger |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Budgeting & Finance | Budgeting & Finance |
| License | GPL-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Language | C | C++ |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | binary, bare-metal | bare-metal, binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 156 | ★ 6,011 |
| First released | 2000 | 2003 |
| Replaces | Quicken | QuickBooks, Quicken |
Why pick each one
Choose Grisbi if…
- Released under the GPL-2.0 license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- Written in C
- Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
Choose Hospitable Ledger if…
- Extremely portable data
- Scriptable and version-controllable
Frequently asked questions
Is Grisbi or Hospitable Ledger better?
Neither is universally better. Hospitable Ledger has the larger community, while Grisbi is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Grisbi and Hospitable Ledger free and open-source?
Yes. Grisbi is licensed under GPL-2.0 and Hospitable Ledger under BSD-3-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Grisbi and Hospitable Ledger with Docker?
Grisbi: check the project docs for container support. Hospitable Ledger: check the project docs for container support.