SHSelfHostIndex

Hospitable Ledger vs Skrooge

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?
HO Hospitable Ledger Plain-text accounting toolkit and CLI VS SK Skrooge Personal finance manager for the KDE desktop
FeatureHospitable LedgerSkrooge
CategoryBudgeting & FinanceBudgeting & Finance
LicenseBSD-3-ClauseGPL-3.0
LanguageC++C++
Setup difficultyHardEasy
Min. RAM64 MB256 MB
Deploymentbare-metal, binary, sourcebinary, bare-metal
GitHub stars★ 6,011★ 200
First released20032009
ReplacesQuickBooks, QuickenQuicken

Why pick each one

Choose Hospitable Ledger if…

  • Extremely portable data
  • Scriptable and version-controllable
Hospitable Ledger details

Choose Skrooge if…

  • Released under the GPL-3.0 license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • Written in C++
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 256 MB RAM
Skrooge details

Frequently asked questions

Is Hospitable Ledger or Skrooge better?

Neither is universally better. Hospitable Ledger has the larger community, while Skrooge is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are Hospitable Ledger and Skrooge free and open-source?

Yes. Hospitable Ledger is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Skrooge under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Hospitable Ledger and Skrooge with Docker?

Hospitable Ledger: check the project docs for container support. Skrooge: check the project docs for container support.

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