Hospitable Ledger vs Pretzel Finance
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?
Hospitable Ledger
Plain-text accounting toolkit and CLI
VS
Pretzel Finance
Self-hosted stock and crypto portfolio tracker
| Feature | Hospitable Ledger | Pretzel Finance |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Budgeting & Finance | Budgeting & Finance |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | EPL-1.0 |
| Language | C++ | Java |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal, binary, source | bare-metal, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 6,011 | ★ 4,006 |
| First released | 2003 | 2012 |
| Replaces | QuickBooks, Quicken | Sharesight, Personal Capital |
Why pick each one
Choose Hospitable Ledger if…
- Extremely portable data
- Scriptable and version-controllable
Frequently asked questions
Is Hospitable Ledger or Pretzel Finance better?
Neither is universally better. Hospitable Ledger has the larger community, while Pretzel Finance is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Hospitable Ledger and Pretzel Finance free and open-source?
Yes. Hospitable Ledger is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Pretzel Finance under EPL-1.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Hospitable Ledger and Pretzel Finance with Docker?
Hospitable Ledger: check the project docs for container support. Pretzel Finance: check the project docs for container support.
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