Free accounting software
Every free tier stops somewhere: a revenue ceiling, a single user, an invoice cap, or bank feeds kept for the paid plan. Six free and open-source options for small-business bookkeeping, ranked by what the free version really includes, with every limit read from the vendor's own site on October 10, 2026.
Six things to check before you put a year of books into a free tool. Plans, limits and licences checked October 2026 — each read from the vendor's own site or repository on October 10, 2026.
| What matters | Beancount.io | Wave | GnuCash | Zoho Books | Manager.io | Akaunting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What is free | Open-source core, free; hosted Premium $99.99/yr or $14.99/mo is optional | Starter plan, $0; Pro is $19/mo or $190/yr | Everything — there is no paid tier | Free plan, $0; Standard is $15/mo billed annually or $20 monthly | Desktop edition; the Cloud Edition is $59/mo | Self-hosted Standard plan; Cloud is $12/mo or $8/mo billed yearly |
| Where free stops | No revenue, invoice or user ceiling in the open-source core | Bank auto-import, receipt capture and user roles need Pro | No limit; one desktop user | Revenue up to $50K a year, 1,000 invoices a year, 1 user + 1 accountant | No time or usage limits; single user | 1 company, 1 user + 1 accountant, 1,000 invoices |
| Invoicing | Not built in — record invoices issued elsewhere | Unlimited invoices and estimates, with online card payments | Customer invoices, vendor bills and jobs | Invoices, quotes and a customer portal | Sales and purchase invoices | Invoices, up to 1,000 on the free plan |
| Getting bank data in | File importers, free; hosted bank sync is optional | Automatic bank import is a Pro feature | QIF and OFX import; HBCI for German banks | Bank reconciliation on Free; bank feeds from Standard | Bank and cash accounts with bank reconciliation | Bank Feeds is a separate paid app |
| Open source | Yes — Beancount is GPL-2.0, Fava is MIT | No — a proprietary cloud service | Yes — GNU GPL | No — a proprietary cloud service | No — free installers, no published source | Source-available: Business Source License 1.1, GPLv3 after four years |
| Who owns the data | You do — plain-text files on your own disk | Wave's cloud | You do — a local file on your own computer | Zoho's cloud | You do on desktop — a local file you back up yourself | You do when self-hosted — a database on your own server |
Ranked for a small-business owner or freelancer who wants proper books at no cost and wants to know, before starting, what will eventually ask for money. If sending invoices and taking card payments is the main job, start at number two.
Free core · hosted Premium $99.99/yr
Plain-text double-entry accounting: an open-source core with no revenue ceiling, invoice cap or user limit, and hosting only if you want it.
Best for: Owners and freelancers who want books that stay free as the business grows, and are comfortable with a first hour of setup.
Starter $0 · Pro $19/mo or $190/yr
A hosted app whose free Starter plan covers unlimited invoices, estimates, bills and bookkeeping records.
Best for: Service businesses and freelancers who mainly need to send invoices, get paid by card and keep simple books in a browser.
Free, open source
Free, open-source desktop double-entry accounting with customers, vendors, invoicing and bill payment — and no paid tier at all.
Best for: Owners who want complete double-entry books on their own computer and do not need anyone else to log in.
Free up to $50K revenue · Standard $15/mo billed annually
A full cloud accounting app that is free for the smallest businesses — the Free plan lasts while revenue stays at or under $50K a year.
Best for: Solo owners under $50K a year in revenue who want a web app with an accountant login and a path into the wider Zoho suite.
Desktop free · Cloud Edition $59/mo
A free desktop accounting program for Windows, Mac and Linux with invoicing, inventory, payslips and fixed assets.
Best for: Single-user businesses that want a broad feature set offline, with no time limit and no cap on how much data they enter.
Self-hosted Standard free · Cloud from $8/mo billed yearly
A web accounting app you can host yourself, with a free Standard plan for one-person businesses.
Best for: One-person businesses with a server and the skills to run a PHP web app, who want browser-based invoicing they host themselves.
It depends on which limit you can live with, because every free tier has one. Beancount keeps your books as plain-text files with no revenue ceiling, invoice cap or user limit, but has no built-in invoicing. Wave's free Starter plan has unlimited invoices and bookkeeping records, with bank auto-import reserved for Pro. GnuCash and Manager.io are free desktop programs for one user. Zoho Books is free while revenue stays at or under $50K a year. Akaunting is free to self-host for one company, two users and 1,000 invoices. Every limit here was read from the vendor's own site on October 10, 2026.
Yes, with a caveat about what completely means. GnuCash is free software under the GNU GPL with no paid tier at all. Manager.io's desktop edition is free with, in its own words, no time limits, no usage limits and no ads; its paid product is a separate cloud edition. Beancount's open-source core is free with no ceiling, and hosting is optional. Wave Starter and Zoho Books Free cost $0 but keep some features for paid plans, and Akaunting's free self-hosted plan is capped by its licence. Checked October 10, 2026.
For plain bookkeeping — recording income and expenses, reconciling accounts, and producing a profit and loss statement and balance sheet — any of the six will do the job at no cost. Choose by how you work: Wave or Zoho Books if you want a web app and invoicing, GnuCash or Manager.io if you want a desktop program that works offline, Akaunting if you want to host a web app yourself, and Beancount if you want double-entry books in plain text that you can version, script and keep for decades.
Two tools in this ranking are open source in the usual sense: Beancount, licensed GPL-2.0, and GnuCash, licensed under the GNU GPL. Akaunting publishes its source code, but under the Business Source License 1.1, which limits free production use to one company, two users and 1,000 invoices and converts to GPLv3 four years after each version is published. Wave and Zoho Books are proprietary cloud services, and Manager.io's site offers installers rather than source code. Licences were read on October 10, 2026.
Yes. Wave's pricing page listed the Starter plan at $0 on October 10, 2026, with unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping records. Automatic bank-transaction import, receipt capture and additional user roles are part of Wave Pro, at $19 a month or $190 a year. Accepting card payments on Starter costs 2.9% plus $0.60 per credit card transaction.
Zoho's United States pricing page, read on October 10, 2026, says the Free plan stays available indefinitely as long as revenue for the financial year does not exceed $50K. It covers one user plus one accountant, up to 1,000 invoices a year and 50 receipt autoscans a month, with email support. Connecting bank feeds is listed from the Standard plan, at $15 per organization a month billed annually or $20 billed monthly.
Many small businesses do. What a free tier rarely includes is the thing that saves the most time — automatic bank feeds — or the thing you add later, such as extra users. Before you commit, check three points: what happens when you pass the free tier's limit, whether you can export your full history, and whether your accountant can work with the files. Tools that keep your books in a file you hold, such as Beancount, GnuCash and Manager.io's desktop edition, have no vendor account to outgrow.
Start free with a plain-text ledger you own — no revenue ceiling, no invoice cap, and hosted sync and mobile apps there when you want them.
