hledger-web 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?
hledger-web
Web interface for hledger plain-text accounting
VS
Hospitable Ledger
Plain-text accounting toolkit and CLI
| Feature | hledger-web | Hospitable Ledger |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Budgeting & Finance | Budgeting & Finance |
| License | GPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Language | Haskell | C++ |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal, binary, source | bare-metal, binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 4,620 | ★ 6,011 |
| First released | 2010 | 2003 |
| Replaces | QuickBooks, Quicken | QuickBooks, Quicken |
Why pick each one
Choose Hospitable Ledger if…
- Extremely portable data
- Scriptable and version-controllable
Frequently asked questions
Is hledger-web or Hospitable Ledger better?
Neither is universally better. Hospitable Ledger has the larger community, while hledger-web is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are hledger-web and Hospitable Ledger free and open-source?
Yes. hledger-web is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Hospitable Ledger under BSD-3-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run hledger-web and Hospitable Ledger with Docker?
hledger-web: check the project docs for container support. Hospitable Ledger: check the project docs for container support.