head to head · open source
Akaunting vs Bigcapital
Akaunting has 10,270 GitHub stars, 3,011 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Bigcapital has 4,040 stars, 569 forks, 214 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Akaunting leads on adoption by 154% (10,270 vs 4,040 stars). Akaunting is written in PHP under a custom or non-standard licence; Bigcapital is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Akaunting has attracted 29% as many forks as stars, Bigcapital 14%. Bigcapital was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (accounting, expenses), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Akaunting | Bigcapital | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 10K | ★ 4.0K |
| License | Custom / other | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | PHP | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-31 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.0K | ⑂ 569 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Akaunting if
- You weight community size — 10K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Bigcapital if
- You want the Bigcapital feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Bigcapital fits your workflow better
About Akaunting
Akaunting™ Online accounting software designed for small businesses and freelancers. Akaunting is built with modern technologies such as Laravel, VueJS, Tailwind, RESTful API etc. Thanks to its modular structure, Akaunting provides an awesome App Store for users and developers. Home The house of Akaunting Forum Ask for support Documentation Learn how to use Developer Portal Generate passive income App Store Extend your Akaunting Requirements PHP 8.1 or higher Database (e.g.: MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite) Web Server (eg: Apache, Nginx, IIS) Other libraries Framework Akaunting uses Laravel, the best existing…
read the full Akaunting overview →
About Bigcapital
Simple, smart online accounting software for small and medium businesses. Bigcapital Cloud What's Bigcapital? Bigcapital is a smart and open source accounting and inventory software, Bigcapital keeps all business finances in right place and automates accounting processes to give the business powerful and intelligent financial statements and reports to help in making decisions. Getting Started We've got serveral options on dev and prod depending on your need to get started quickly with Bigcapital. Self hosted Bigcapital is available open source under AGPL license. You can host it on your own servers using Docker…
read the full Bigcapital overview →
More in Business Software
Related comparisons
More Finance & Accounting projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Finance & Accounting field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Akaunting or Bigcapital more popular?
Akaunting has 10,270 GitHub stars and Bigcapital has 4,040. Akaunting has the larger community by that measure.
Are Akaunting and Bigcapital free?
Both are open source. Akaunting has no licence declared in this registry, and Bigcapital is licensed under AGPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Akaunting and Bigcapital?
Akaunting is written in PHP and Bigcapital in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Akaunting or Bigcapital?
Choose Akaunting if you want the larger community (10,270 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Bigcapital if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.