Frappe Books vs hledger
Frappe Books
frappe.iohledger
hledger.orgSide by side
| Figure | Frappe Books | hledger |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 2 |
| Spec score · General Ledger Software | 8.8 (#3) | 8.6 (#7) |
| Spec score · Bookkeeping Software | 8.7 (#22) | 8.5 (#25) |
| Accounting | It keeps double-entry books and includes a country-specific chart of accounts, journal entries, and financial reports. | It provides multi-currency double-entry accounting using plain-text files. |
| Double-entry accounting | The application provides a double-entry ledger, chart of accounts and journal entries. | Transactions must balance, and hledger checks syntax, balancing and balance assertions when reading files. |
| Financial reports | Included reports are General Ledger, Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet and Trial Balance. | Built-in reporting includes balance sheets, income statements, cashflow, budgets, registers and multi-period summaries. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Inventory tracking | Yes | Yes |
| Invoice creation | Yes | No |
| System requirements | Documented requirements are Frappe Framework develop branch, Python 3.14, current LTS Node.js and Yarn, Redis, and MariaDB 11.8, PostgreSQL 18 or SQLite 3. | Building from source requires GHC plus Stack or Cabal and may need about 4 GB of RAM and at least 4 GB of disk space. |
| What it does | Frappe Books is accounting software for small businesses and freelancers. | hledger is cross-platform, plain-text, double-entry accounting software for tracking money, investments, cryptocurrencies, invoices, time and inventory. |
Plans
In their own words
Frappe Books
Frappe Books is accounting software for small businesses, available free under the AGPL-3.0 license. It supports quotes, invoices, payments, bills, supplier payments and returns, alongside double-entry bookkeeping, journal entries and financial reports. Inventory tools track stock across locations, including batches, expiry dates and serial numbers, and the software supports point-of-sale transactions. Businesses in India can produce GSTR-1 and GSTR-2 reports for GST returns. Books User, Books Manager and System Manager roles control access to records, reports and settings. Company data stays in the database of the customer’s Frappe site, and the software runs on the customer’s own server. It is listed for Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, self-hosted use, web and Windows. On phones, it runs in a browser and can be added to the home screen, but an internet connection is required. The old desktop app is no longer supported. Frappe states that its quality and information security systems have ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 27001:2022 certifications and SOC 2 Type II attestation.
hledger
hledger is free accounting software for tracking money, investments, cryptocurrencies, time, and other countable items in plain-text files. It provides multi-currency double-entry accounting and generates balance sheet, income statement, and cashflow reports, including reports across multiple periods. It offers command-line, terminal, and web interfaces; the web interface can also serve a JSON API.
hledger imports CSV and can output text, HTML, CSV, JSON, or SQL. It can interoperate with Ledger and Beancount formats. The software runs locally and offline, keeping plain-text data under the user's control. Bank feeds, automated reconciliation, and inventory tracking are supported; invoice creation is not. Official binaries are available for Linux x64, Mac x64 and arm64, and Windows x64, with no official Linux ARM binaries. The web app normally runs locally and is accessible only from the user's machine. hledger is Free Software under GNU GPLv3+ with no purchase price or monthly fees.