hledger
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 5 accounting software by recommenders
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.
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.
20 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 85%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 3.5 years
Median of the 4 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it carries the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Imports bank CSVs and categorizes automatically
“automatically imports the CSVs from my bank and categorizes transactions automatically”
Comment from 8 Jun 2026 in “Spanish traders set the standard forGnuCash database design” “hledger has its own rules engine for filtering/transforming imported entries”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “Minimal Viable Programs (2014)” “hledger itself reads the CSV files and autocategorizes the transactions”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “10 years of personal finances in plain text files” Precise, good way to track accounting
“Double entry accounting is nice for being precise about things. But for my own accounts it's too much overhead to deal with reconciliation.”
Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Show HN: Wealthfolio 2.0- Open source investment tracker. Now Mobile and Docker” “It's not easy to start but I think it's one of the best ways to keep track of accounting”
Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “GnuCash is right. It's also why I built my own finance app” Simple, pleasant bookkeeping
“It was nerver so simple to make "okay enough" book keeping.”
Comment from 7 Jul 2026 in “Software Bonkers” “It's quite a pleasant experience I must say”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “10 years of personal finances in plain text files” Matches the approach they wanted
“it only started to work when I've discovered the idea”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “10 years of personal finances in plain text files” “Turns out it's exactly what I wanted all this time”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “10 years of personal finances in plain text files”
Other accounting software people recommend
The four most recommended other accounting software, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beancount | 25 | 3 | 89% | 8 | 4 yrs6 owners | Approved |
| hledgerThis page | 17 | 3 | 85% | 6 | 3.5 yrs4 owners | Approved |
| GnuCash | 16 | 10 | 62% | 6 | 3 yrs3 owners | — |
| QuickBooks | 12 | 28 | 30% | 6 | — | — |
| Xero | 5 | 5 | 50% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
18 of the 22 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It was nerver so simple to make "okay enough" book keeping.”
“This is what I use & like as well”
“It's not easy to start but I think it's one of the best ways to keep track of accounting”
“automatically imports the CSVs from my bank and categorizes transactions automatically”
“Fava is such a huge step up from the hledger web ui”
“hledger has its own rules engine for filtering/transforming imported entries”
“I haven't noticed any bugs that affect me in years of using it.”
“I'll stick to hledger and a regex file.”
“Actually this is one of the reasons I have dropped hledger in general.”
“hledger itself reads the CSV files and autocategorizes the transactions”
“doing hledger motivated me to simplify things”
“the amount of time I invested and the ROI wasn’t there”
“I cannot go back to traditional tools.”
“It's quite a pleasant experience I must say”
“Turns out it's exactly what I wanted all this time”
“that link has a good explanation of how it works”
“it only started to work when I've discovered the idea”
“Double entry accounting is nice for being precise about things. But for my own accounts it's too much overhead to deal with reconciliation.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.