Hospitable Ledger vs Rotki
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
Rotki
Privacy-focused portfolio and crypto accounting tool
| Feature | Hospitable Ledger | Rotki |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Budgeting & Finance | Budgeting & Finance |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | C++ | Python |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal, binary, source | docker, binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 6,011 | ★ 3,968 |
| First released | 2003 | 2018 |
| Replaces | QuickBooks, Quicken | CoinTracker, Koinly |
Why pick each one
Choose Hospitable Ledger if…
- Extremely portable data
- Scriptable and version-controllable
Choose Rotki if…
- Released under the AGPL-3.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (4k GitHub stars)
- Written in Python
Frequently asked questions
Is Hospitable Ledger or Rotki better?
Neither is universally better. Hospitable Ledger has the larger community, while Rotki is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Hospitable Ledger and Rotki free and open-source?
Yes. Hospitable Ledger is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Rotki under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Hospitable Ledger and Rotki with Docker?
Hospitable Ledger: check the project docs for container support. Rotki: yes.