# hledger

17 Hacker News commenters recommended hledger and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 3.5 years (4 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free plain-text double-entry accounting tool that people find simple and reliable, with CSV import rules. Caveat: reconciliation can feel like too much overhead.

## Why people recommend it

- Imports bank CSVs and categorizes automatically (3 comments): "automatically imports the CSVs from my bank and categorizes transactions automatically" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48446246)) "hledger has its own rules engine for filtering/transforming imported entries" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47825134)) "hledger itself reads the CSV files and autocategorizes the transactions" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46468573))
- Precise, good way to track accounting (2 comments): "Double entry accounting is nice for being precise about things. But for my own accounts it's too much overhead to deal with reconciliation." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46009626)) "It's not easy to start but I think it's one of the best ways to keep track of accounting" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48476945))
- Simple, pleasant bookkeeping (2 comments): "It was nerver so simple to make "okay enough" book keeping." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48820994)) "It's quite a pleasant experience I must say" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466507))
- Matches the approach they wanted (2 comments): "it only started to work when I've discovered the idea" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46465151)) "Turns out it's exactly what I wanted all this time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46465770))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Beancount](https://hackerapproved.com/p/beancount.md): 25 recommend
- [GnuCash](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gnucash.md): 16 recommend
- [QuickBooks](https://hackerapproved.com/p/quickbooks.md): 12 recommend
- [Xero](https://hackerapproved.com/p/xero.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "hledger", https://hackerapproved.com/p/hledger/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).