Primary purpose
- Beancount
- Complete, programmable double-entry accounting
- Credit Karma
- Free credit monitoring plus spending and net-worth tracking
Beancount vs Credit Karma
Free shouldn't mean ads and a capped history.
Credit Karma is free because credit-card and loan referrals pay for it — and it has no budgeting tools, with history capped at a reported three years for Mint migrants. Beancount is free because it's open source: a plain-text ledger you own, with real budgeting, unlimited history, and no ads.
- Free & open source
- No ads, no data selling
- Unlimited history you own
100%
Open-source core
$0
To self-host Beancount + Fava
Plain text
A ledger you can still read in 30 years
0
Ads or referral prompts in your ledger
Beancount vs Credit Karma, side by side
Both products cost zero dollars, so the price tag tells you nothing. The difference is who pays, who owns the data, and how much of your history survives. Here's that trade, row by row.
Beancount
Credit Karma
Beancount
Budgeting-capable accounting
Full double-entry books: every transaction balances, budgets are first-class, and Fava's plan-versus-actual views run whatever budgeting method you design — the hole the Mint shutdown left, filled properly.
Credit Karma
No budgeting tools
Credit Karma tracks spending, cash flow, and net worth by preset category — but offers no category budgets, spending limits, or savings goals. Mint's budgeting never made the trip.
Beancount
Unlimited history, owned outright
Every entry stays in your plain-text files until you delete it — no migration caps, no sync windows, no deletion deadlines. Files from 2010 still parse today.
Credit Karma
A capped slice of history
The Mint migration carried a reported ~3 years of transactions, and accounts linked fresh import about 90 days. Anything older simply isn't there.
Beancount
No ads, no data-selling
There is no business model pointed at your data: no referral engine, no targeted offers, no audience being sold. Your ledger is a file, not a funnel.
Credit Karma
Free as in advertising
Credit Karma earns referral commissions by recommending credit cards and loans. Legal and disclosed — but the product is designed to route your attention toward offers.
Beancount
Real investment accounting
Track lots, acquisition cost, prices, conversions, and capital gains across every brokerage, in the same ledger as your day-to-day spending.
Credit Karma
Snapshot balances
Credit Karma shows investment balances and basic monitoring. Lots, cost basis, and capital-gain accounting aren't part of the product.
Beancount
Programmable everything
Python importers, plugins, Bean Query, and AI-assisted entry let the ledger fit your finances exactly — automate anything you can describe.
Credit Karma
Category edits only
You can recategorize transactions, and that's about it — the customization ceiling is whatever the app exposes. No importers, queries, or scripts.
Beancount
Open source outlives vendors
The ledger format and core tools answer to no one's quarterly targets. Your files can't be sunset, migrated, or capped — readable in any editor decades from now.
Credit Karma
Intuit's product decisions
Your data lives on Intuit's servers, subject to Intuit's roadmap. Mint users learned what that means when the shutdown took their budgets and history.
Where Credit Karma still wins
Credit Karma's strengths are real — and one of them is something Beancount will never do. Here's the honest list.
Genuinely free, zero setup
Signup-to-insight takes minutes and costs nothing — no files, no format to learn. Beancount asks for a real learning investment before it pays off, and pretending otherwise wastes your time.
Free credit-score monitoring
VantageScore 3.0 scores and reports from TransUnion and Equifax, with alerts when something changes — legitimately valuable, and Beancount does nothing like it. A plain-text ledger has no line to the credit bureaus, so keep it.
Automatic everything
Connect accounts and a categorized dashboard appears — good enough for a passive glance at where money went. beancount.io's Bank Sync and Smart Import get close, but you'll review and tune, especially early on.
The familiar Intuit ecosystem
Polished iOS and Android apps from the company behind TurboTax and QuickBooks, designed for glances. beancount.io's mobile apps narrow the gap, but a plain-text workflow never feels as frictionless.
The full comparison
Feature by feature, no marketing spin.
Business model
- Beancount
- Free open-source core; optional paid hosting
- Credit Karma
- Free; earns referral fees recommending credit cards and loans
Data ownership
- Beancount
- Plain-text files you own, version, and back up
- Credit Karma
- Hosted on Intuit's servers
Budgeting
- Beancount
- Custom budgets, queries, and Fava views you design
- Credit Karma
- None — no category budgets, spending limits, or goals
History
- Beancount
- Unlimited — every entry stays in your files forever
- Credit Karma
- Mint migration capped at a reported ~3 years; new accounts ~90 days
Investments
- Beancount
- Full lot, cost basis, price, and capital-gain accounting
- Credit Karma
- Balances and basic monitoring
Credit monitoring
- Beancount
- None — and never will be
- Credit Karma
- Free VantageScore 3.0 from TransUnion and Equifax, with alerts
Multi-currency
- Beancount
- Structured commodity and conversion support
- Credit Karma
- Primarily US institutions, single-currency focus
| Area | Beancount | Credit Karma |
|---|---|---|
| Primary purpose | Complete, programmable double-entry accounting | Free credit monitoring plus spending and net-worth tracking |
| Business model | Free open-source core; optional paid hosting | Free; earns referral fees recommending credit cards and loans |
| Data ownership | Plain-text files you own, version, and back up | Hosted on Intuit's servers |
| Budgeting | Custom budgets, queries, and Fava views you design | None — no category budgets, spending limits, or goals |
| History | Unlimited — every entry stays in your files forever | Mint migration capped at a reported ~3 years; new accounts ~90 days |
| Investments | Full lot, cost basis, price, and capital-gain accounting | Balances and basic monitoring |
| Credit monitoring | None — and never will be | Free VantageScore 3.0 from TransUnion and Equifax, with alerts |
| Multi-currency | Structured commodity and conversion support | Primarily US institutions, single-currency focus |
See your whole financial picture
Web dashboards, BQL queries, and native mobile apps — one plain-text ledger behind all of it.
Free vs free
Both products cost zero dollars — so the price tag tells you nothing. The business model tells you everything: one is free as in advertising, the other free as in yours.
Beancount
Free
open source, forever
- Beancount + Fava: $0, self-hosted
- No ads, no referral engine — nothing monetizes your data
- Optional beancount.io plans for bank sync, smart import, and mobile
Credit Karma
Free
ad-funded — referrals pay
- Two-bureau credit scores, reports, and monitoring alerts
- No paid tier that removes the ads — the ads are the product
- Your attention and data profile are the business
Migrating from Credit Karma in five steps
Your best raw material is what you saved: pre-shutdown Mint CSV exports hold the only full history, while Credit Karma and bank CSVs fill the rest. Work from all three.
- 1
Gather your Mint CSV exports
Pre-shutdown Mint exports are the only source of your full history — the Credit Karma migration carried a reported ~3 years, and fresh account links import about 90 days. Store untouched copies somewhere safe; if you never exported, start from bank statements instead.
- 2
Export Credit Karma and bank CSVs
Download what you can from Credit Karma, plus transaction CSVs directly from each bank — banks typically reach back further than Credit Karma's 90-day window, so no single app's caps limit you.
- 3
Import in batches with Smart Import
Map each account to a Beancount account and Mint categories to income and expense accounts, then convert rows into balanced transactions a month at a time. Handle transfers between your own accounts so they don't appear as both income and expense.
- 4
Reconcile against statements
Pick a cutover date, note each account's balance from your bank statements, and compare after every batch — an external source of truth, not any app's word.
- 5
Add balance assertions
Balance assertions at statement dates make the ledger prove itself against the outside world from now on. And keep Credit Karma running for credit monitoring — your reports live with the bureaus regardless.
Which should you choose?
Choose Beancount if…
…the Mint shutdown changed what you want from a money tool: records no company can take away, budgeting-capable accounting provable against statements, unlimited history, real investments and multi-currency — and no ads pointed at your data, ever.
Choose Credit Karma if…
…you want free credit monitoring, effortless spending awareness, and a polished app that asks nothing of you. Its credit-score monitoring is the real deal and Beancount has no equivalent — just go in clear-eyed about no budgeting, capped history, and ads.
It doesn't have to be either-or: your credit reports live with the bureaus no matter which apps you install, so keep Credit Karma for monitoring while Beancount keeps the books. The cheapest experiment is free in both senses: import a month, reconcile it, add a balance assertion.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Beancount a good Credit Karma alternative?
It depends on what you use Credit Karma for. If you want a permanent, complete record of your money — real budgeting-capable accounting, unlimited transaction history, investments with cost basis, and no ads — Beancount is the stronger tool, because your ledger is a plain-text file you own. If what you value is Credit Karma's free credit-score monitoring and zero-effort spending dashboard, Beancount is not a replacement: it does not monitor credit at all. Many people end up using both — Credit Karma for credit watching, Beancount as the books.
Does Credit Karma have budgeting tools?
No. Credit Karma tracks net worth, spending, and cash flow, and it breaks spending down by category with month-over-month comparisons — but it offers no monthly category budgets, no spending limits, and no savings goals. That gap is exactly what disappointed Mint users after the March 2024 shutdown: Intuit directed them to Credit Karma, but Mint's budgeting features did not come along. Beancount supports custom budgets, plan-versus-actual views in Fava, and any budgeting method you care to encode in the ledger.
Can I import my full Mint history into Beancount?
Yes — if you exported your Mint data as CSV files before the shutdown on March 23, 2024. Those exports are the only source of your full history: the migration to Credit Karma carried only about three years of transactions, and accounts you connect to Credit Karma today import roughly 90 days. Mint's CSV columns (Date, Description, Amount, Transaction Type, Category, Account Name, Labels, Notes) map cleanly onto Beancount accounts and balanced transactions. History you never exported is gone; start balance assertions from verifiable bank statements instead.
Is Beancount really free — what's the catch?
Both products are free, but for different reasons. Credit Karma is free because it earns referral commissions by recommending credit cards and loans to you — your attention and your data profile are the business. Beancount is free because it is open source: there is no business model pointed at your data, and your ledger is a text file you can keep without paying anyone. The honest catch with Beancount is effort, not money — you invest some learning up front. Optional beancount.io plans charge for hosted conveniences like bank sync, smart import, and mobile workflows.
Does Beancount monitor credit scores?
No, and it never will — a plain-text ledger on your computer has no connection to the credit bureaus. Credit Karma's free VantageScore 3.0 scores and reports from TransUnion and Equifax, with regular updates and monitoring alerts, are genuinely useful, and we recommend keeping them. The good news is this is not an either-or choice: your credit report lives with the bureaus regardless of which app you use, so you can keep Credit Karma for credit monitoring while Beancount keeps your financial records.
Ready for free as in yours?
Start free in minutes — no credit card, no lock-in, and your plain-text ledger is always yours to keep.