Free Software Collection
Free Accounting and Personal Finance Software
Bookkeeping software has an unavoidable property: it sees everything you spend. Commercial apps typically want your bank login for automatic sync, keep the ledger on a vendor server, cap the number of books or the history range on the free tier, and put export behind a paywall. Everything in this list keeps the data in your hands — a local database, plain text files, or a service you run. It sorts three ways: double-entry accounting, everyday budgeting, and portfolio tracking.
11 curated recommendations
Selection Criteria
- Data is local or self-hosted, with no forced upload of your ledger to a vendor.
- Export is unrestricted — the full book leaves with you at any time.
- No caps on the number of books, entries or how far back you can look.
- Usable without linking a bank account or handing over online banking credentials.
Recommended Tools
GnuCash
Real double-entry accounting — it tells you when the books do not balance
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
Actual Budget
Envelope budgeting — give every dollar a job before you spend it
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
HomeBank
Household bookkeeping with no accounting to learn first
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
Money Manager EX
Accounts, budgets and charts — usable the moment it opens
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
Firefly III
A personal finance system running on your own server
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Self-hostable
Beancount
Your ledger is a text file — and it belongs in Git
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
Ghostfolio
A self-hosted investment dashboard, readable from anywhere
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Cross-platform
Portfolio Performance
Work out what your investments actually returned, with nothing uploaded
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
KMyMoney
Double-entry underneath, personal-finance software on the surface
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
hledger
Your ledger is a plain text file — Git-friendly and still readable in twenty years
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
Wallos
Every auto-renewal on one list, with a reminder before each charge
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Self-hostable
FAQ
- I just want to know where the money went and I do not know accounting. Which one?
- HomeBank or Money Manager EX. Both are standalone desktop apps — create an account, start entering, and the categories, budgets and reports are sufficient without understanding debits and credits. Actual Budget also fits, using envelope budgeting where money is assigned to purposes first and spent from those assignments.
- What separates GnuCash from Beancount?
- Both are double-entry; the form differs. GnuCash is a GUI over a database, suited to people comfortable with tables and menus. Beancount is plain text — the ledger is a file you can put in Git, with version history on every change and scripts to process it in bulk. People who write code usually prefer the second.
- Which one runs on my own server?
- Firefly III. A web interface deployed with Docker, covering multiple accounts, budgets, bill reminders and rule-based categorisation, usable from a phone browser. It is built for "I have a server and my ledger should not pass through anyone else."
- How do I track investments?
- Ghostfolio or Portfolio Performance. Ghostfolio is a self-hosted web app for allocation and return curves; Portfolio Performance is a desktop app with finer calculation, including true time-weighted returns and multiple currencies. Neither asks for your broker login — enter manually or import a CSV.