Assembly Line

Hledger

Robust, fast, intuitive plain text accounting tool with CLI, TUI and web interfaces.

Hledger is an open-source plain-text accounting project on GitHub under the GPL-3.0 license (strong copyleft), with 4.8k stars. It is built with GHC. Its last push was 2 days ago.

Stars
4.8k
License
GPL-3.0
Activity
Active
Latest release
1.52.4

Code on GitHub Website

Judgement

What it is
Developer tool
What it does
Plain-text double-entry accounting with command-line, terminal and web interfaces, strong CSV import, and reports such as balance sheets and income statements.
Adopt it when
You want reliable, private plain-text books for personal or small business finances with good documentation.
Watch out
The interfaces are basic, and you need to learn the journal format and double-entry concepts.
Ready for
Production-ready
Runs as
Command line and self-hosted server
Built with
Haskell
How established
Established: started 13 years ago, latest release 1.52.4.
What the license allows
Use inside your business is unrestricted, but anything you distribute that includes it must be released under the same license.

Judged on 2026-11-03 from the project's README and GitHub data. The license and age lines are worked out directly.

Built from

Follow it down: Hledger → GHC → GCC → LLVM project → runs on a microchip

How compilers were built, back to punched paper tape

Open-source alternatives to Hledger

  1. 1
    Beancount beancount

    Beancount: Double-Entry Accounting from Text Files.

    Developer tool Production-ready You want strict, version-controlled double-entry books for personal or small business finances and are comfortable editing text files.

    ★ 6.1k GPL-2.0 Python Active, pushed 2 months ago
  2. 2
    Paisa ananthakumaran

    Paisa – Personal Finance Manager. https://paisa.fyi demo: https://demo.paisa.fyi

    Complete system Usable You keep or want to keep personal books in ledger format and want visual reports on top.

    ★ 3.2k AGPL-3.0 TypeScript Active, pushed 16 days ago
  3. 3
    Fava beancount

    Fava - web interface for Beancount

    Complete system Production-ready You keep double-entry books in Beancount and want reports and editing in a browser.

    ★ 2.6k MIT Python Active, pushed 8 days ago
  4. 4
    Double-entry-generator deb-sig

    Rule-based double-entry bookkeeping importer (from Alipay/WeChat/Huobi etc. to Beancount/Ledger).

    Developer tool Usable You keep plain-text books and your money moves through Chinese payment apps or banks.

    ★ 732 Apache-2.0 Go Active, pushed 5 days ago
  5. 5
    Transity ad-si

    Keep track of your 💵, 🕘, 🐖, 🐄, 🍻 on your command line with the plain text accounting tool of the future! 🚀

    Developer tool Usable You want plain-text bookkeeping with a structured format and are happy outside the ledger and Beancount ecosystems.

    ★ 655 AGPL-3.0 Rust Active, pushed 13 days ago
  6. 6
    Ledger howeyc

    Command line double-entry accounting program

    Developer tool Usable You want a single fast binary for ledger-format books with a simple web report.

    ★ 506 ISC Go Active, pushed 2 months ago
  7. 7
    Beancount-import jbms

    Web UI for semi-automatically importing external data into beancount

    Developer tool Usable You keep Beancount books and want semi-automatic import and reconciliation from many sources.

    ★ 475 GPL-2.0 Python Active, pushed 3 days ago
  8. 8
    Fava Dashboards andreasgerstmayr

    Custom Dashboards for Beancount in Fava

    Integration Usable You use Fava and want your own charts, such as Sankey diagrams of income and spending.

    ★ 419 MIT TypeScript Active, pushed 7 days ago

Stars, license and activity come from GitHub and refresh on a rolling hourly schedule. The project's own description is quoted as written.