GnuCash
Full double-entry accounting for home and small business, free and on every platform.
Our verdict
GnuCash is the serious option for anyone who outgrew a spreadsheet. It replaces Quicken, MYOB or a small QuickBooks setup, and it is the same program you may already have used on Windows.
Everything is built on double-entry accounting, where every amount goes out of one account and into another. That is exactly what an accountant wants and exactly what a casual budgeter finds off-putting. Give yourself an evening with the tutorial before you judge it.
Bank connections are the weak point. Direct feeds work for some European banks, and for everyone else you download a QIF or OFX file from internet banking and import it. If you want something lighter for household budgeting, HomeBank is the gentler choice.
What's good
- Handles a small business properly, including invoices, payables and reports
- Imports the QIF and OFX files most banks and older money programs can produce
- Same program on Windows and Linux, so your file moves across untouched
What to know first
- Double-entry bookkeeping is a real concept you have to learn before it makes sense
- The interface looks dated next to modern budgeting apps
- No live bank feeds for most Australian, British and American banks, so you import files by hand
The details
- Cost
- Free
- Open source
- Yes (GPL-2.0-or-later)
- How you install it
- App store (Flatpak), .deb installer, .rpm installer, Built-in app store
Windows apps it can replace
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