Beancount.io

Your money in plain text forever — beautiful reports, a phone app, a terminal CLI, and AI agents that can actually do your books.
No lock-in. No database you can't read. Your ledger is a .bean text file you own, diff, and back up with Git — Beancount.io just makes it effortless to use everywhere.

▶ Try the live demo — no sign-up · Sign up and record a transaction · ⭐ Star to support open finance

_{Turn a plain-text ledger into reports you can explore — open the live example.}

Try it in 30 seconds

No install. No empty-ledger setup. Just record your first real transaction:

1. Sign up at beancount.io/sign-up — already have an account? Log in.
2. Open your ledger (create one if prompted — it takes seconds).
3. Record a transaction — on the web open your ledger's Journal and add an entry; on mobile tap Add Transaction. Try a coffee run: Expenses:Dining 12.50 paid from Assets:Checking.
4. See it land — check the journal, then watch the income statement and balance sheet update.

If Beancount.io is the kind of open, programmable finance you want more of, ⭐ star this repo — it genuinely helps other developers find it.

brew install bex-co/tap/bea      # macOS / Linuxbrew
or: uv tool install beancount-io   # anywhere with uv + Python 3.12+

bea --no-input init books --currency USD --date 2026-08-01 \
  --opening-balance "Assets:Checking 1000"
cd books
bea add transaction "Coffee" --date 2026-08-02 \
  --posting "Expenses:Dining 12.50" --posting "Assets:Checking"
bea check && bea report balance-sheet

Your first five minutes

• [ ] Sign up, open your ledger, and record the transaction above — on the web or in the mobile app.
• [ ] Open the live demo and click through the income statement, balance sheet, and account trees.
• [ ] Add two or three real transactions, then check the updated reports.
• [ ] Optional: automate with the CLI tutorial or point your coding agent at the skills.

Who this is for

• Plain-text purists — you want double-entry accounting in files that outlive any app, work with Git, and open in any editor.
• Developers — you want to script, query, and build on your finances from Python and the terminal instead of exporting CSVs from a SaaS.
• Agent users — you want Claude Code, Codex, or another coding agent to import statements, reconcile accounts, and close the month, with every write checked and confirm-gated.

How it compares

| | Beancount.io | Plain Beancount + Fava | Spreadsheet / SaaS finance app | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Your data | Plain-text .bean files you own | Plain-text .bean files you own | Locked in a database / their cloud | | Reports | Web, mobile, CLI, and Python reports | Web reports (Fava) | Built-in, but not programmable | | On your phone | Native iOS & Android apps | Browser only | Native app, tied to the service | | AI agents | CLI, skills, and MCP built in | Do it yourself | No agent access | | Self-host | Yes — hosted, local-only, or your server | Yes, manual | No | | Cost / license | Free, MIT | Free, open source | Subscription |

Beancount.io stands on Beancount and Fava rather than replacing them — existing ledgers keep working. Full credits: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.md.

Mobile apps

Review your finances, add transactions, scan receipts, and edit ledger files from the native Beancount client. The same open ledger remains available from the web, terminal, Python, and agent workflows.

_{Explore the mobile product tour or run the Expo app locally.}

Every surface, one ledger

| You want to… | Use | Start | | --- | --- | --- | | Work from the terminal or scripts | bea CLI and Python library | CLI tutorial · reference | | See polished reports in a browser | Web dashboard | Live demo · dashboard/ | | Track money on the go | iOS & Android apps | Mobile apps · mobile/ | | Let an agent do your books | Agent skills and MCP | Agents and MCP | | Self-host the whole stack | Backend cluster | deploy/docker/ (one server) · deploy/docker-mac/ (local) |

Your ledger stays the same plain-text file across all of them — hosted or local-first, with no hosted service required for CLI and skills workflows.

Agents and MCP

Beancount.io is built for the agent era: your ledger is text an agent can read, and every write is validated and reversible.

• Coding-agent skills (local ledger) — fourteen beancount-* workflows for Claude Code and Codex: scaffold a ledger, record everyday entries, investment trades and property events, import bank exports without duplicates, reconcile against statements, migrate from Mint/Monarch/QuickBooks, query finances in plain language, explain balance-sheet movements, prepare supported accrual drafts, track invoices and bills with the payments against them, and run a confirm-gated month-end close. Install the skills (native Windows: Windows PowerShell 5.1) → ask your first question → first-month guide → migration guide. Unified suite distribution and OpenClaw/Hermes installation record the current publication and host compatibility limits.
• MCP server — point any MCP client at a deployment to query and edit a ledger from an agent. Also listed on the official MCP Registry as io.beancount/beancount (OAuth sign-in).

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "beancount": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://your-deployment/api-gateway/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer [REDACTED]" }
    }
  }
}

FAQ

Run from source

There is no root package to install; each package owns its dependencies and checks.

cd dashboard && corepack enable && yarn install --immutable
cp .env.example .env && yarn dev   # http://localhost:5173

cd mobile && yarn install && yarn start

cd cli && uv sync --all-groups && uv run bea --help

Contributing

Contributions are welcome across product UI, accounting workflows, accessibility, translations, tests, Python tooling, and agent skills. Start with the contributing guide, browse open issues and the public adoption roadmap, and keep changes focused on one package when possible.

Read our code of conduct before participating. Report vulnerabilities privately through the security policy.

If Beancount.io is the kind of open, programmable finance software you want to see more of, star the repository and help more developers find it.

Community

• Website: beancount.io
• Chat: Telegram
• Mobile: App Store · Google Play
• Issues: github.com/bex-co/beancount-io/issues

Acknowledgements

Beancount.io stands on Beancount and Fava — the vendored fava package inside cli/src/fava ships as bundled subprocess resources in the single beancount-io distribution, and the rest of the plain-text accounting stack (beanquery, beangulp, rustledger) is used as unmodified upstream dependencies. Full credits and license compliance: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.md.

License

MIT © Beancount.io applies by default. The customer skill suite under skills/ uses MIT No Attribution (MIT-0), including its instructions, references, and fixtures. Upstream projects remain under their own licenses.