Hospitable Ledger vs Paisa
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
Paisa
Personal finance manager on plain-text accounting
| Feature | Hospitable Ledger | Paisa |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Budgeting & Finance | Budgeting & Finance |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | C++ | TypeScript |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal, binary, source | docker, binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 6,011 | ★ 3,190 |
| First released | 2003 | 2022 |
| Replaces | QuickBooks, Quicken | Mint, Personal Capital |
Why pick each one
Choose Hospitable Ledger if…
- Extremely portable data
- Scriptable and version-controllable
Frequently asked questions
Is Hospitable Ledger or Paisa better?
Neither is universally better. Hospitable Ledger has the larger community, while Paisa is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Hospitable Ledger and Paisa free and open-source?
Yes. Hospitable Ledger is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Paisa under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Hospitable Ledger and Paisa with Docker?
Hospitable Ledger: check the project docs for container support. Paisa: yes.