Bigcapital
58 · CautionDouble-entry accounting with financial reports, inventory and invoicing.
Directory / Accounting & invoicing
Open source Accounting & invoicing
Source-available and unverified licenses
The code for these is public, but the license is not an OSI open source license, or we have not verified it yet. Check the license notes on each project before relying on it.
Akaunting
87 · HealthyAccounting app for small businesses with invoicing, expenses and an app store.
Invoice Ninja
74 · StableInvoicing, quotes, payments and time tracking for freelancers and small businesses.
Directory / Accounting & invoicing / Akaunting
Akaunting
Accounting app for small businesses with invoicing, expenses and an app store.
Will it still be around?
Health 87/100 · Healthy
Activity, bus factor and issue responsiveness. Breakdown
Can a business use it freely?
Source-available, not open source
Business Source License 1.1 (GPL-3.0 after four years) · relicensed to something stricter in 2023. Details
Alternative to
Savings proposal
A 25-user team on QuickBooks Advanced pays about $340 a month. Self-hosting Akaunting costs about $132 a month to run plus $480 to set up, so it pays for itself in month 3 and saves about $7,008 over three years.
List price: QuickBooks Advanced, billed monthly. Prices after the August 2026 increase. Each plan includes a set number of users; Advanced covers up to 25. Source, checked 2026-10-07.
Saved over 3 years
$7,008
Pays for itself
Month 3
Saved in year one
$2,016
Each month
$340 → $132
Show as a table
| Month | QuickBooks | Self-hosted | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Today | $0 | $480 | −$480 |
| Month 3 | $1,020 | $876 | $144 |
| Month 6 | $2,040 | $1,272 | $768 |
| Month 9 | $3,060 | $1,668 | $1,392 |
| Month 12 | $4,080 | $2,064 | $2,016 |
| Month 18 | $6,120 | $2,856 | $3,264 |
| Month 24 | $8,160 | $3,648 | $4,512 |
| Month 30 | $10,200 | $4,440 | $5,760 |
| Month 36 | $12,240 | $5,232 | $7,008 |
Assumptions you can change
Self-hosting Akaunting usually means one small container and a database. Hours are for one engineer; the server cost is a typical cloud VPS with backups and grows with the number of people using it.
Not included: paid editions or features of Akaunting (see What's free?), large data migrations, and compliance work. All amounts in US dollars at list price; your negotiated price may differ.
Health score: 87/100
Activity45% weight
100/100
- Last commit today (100/100).
- 572 commits in the past 12 months (100/100).
- 7 releases in the past 12 months (100/100).
Bus factor30% weight
59/100
- Top contributor wrote 56% of the last 100 commits (past 12 months).
- 7 people authored those commits.
Responsiveness25% weight
97/100
- 100% of all issues are closed (3 open, 1317 closed) (100/100).
- 21 of 22 recent issues got a reply or were closed (95/100).
Score v2. How the health score works.
License
Business Source License 1.1 (GPL-3.0 after four years) · Source-available, not open source
Production use is free only up to two users, one company and 1,000 invoices. No white-labeling and no offering it as an accounting service. Each version becomes GPL-3.0 four years after publication.
The code is public, but the license restricts how you can use it, usually by banning competing hosted services or capping production use. Not open source.
License text checked 2026-10-07: read it.
License history
- 2023-10-03: GPL-3.0 → BUSL-1.1 · Changed with Akaunting 3.1. (commit)
What's free?
Enterprise features many open-core projects keep for paid plans.
| Feature | Self-hosted, free? |
|---|---|
| SSO (SAML) | Unknown |
| SSO (OIDC) | Unknown |
| SCIM provisioning | Unknown |
| Audit logs | Unknown |
| Role-based access control | Unknown |
| Multi-tenancy | Unknown |
We haven't verified which of these features are free for this project yet.
GitHub metrics
| Stars | 10k | Forks | 3.0k |
|---|---|---|---|
| Last commit | today | Commits, 12 months | 572 |
| Releases, 12 months | 7 | Last release | 20 days ago |
| Contributors | 114 | Active authors | 7 in last 100 commits |
| Open issues | 3 | Closed issues | 1.3k |
Funding: patreon
Snapshot from 2026-10-08.