head to head · open source
Firefly III vs ezBookkeeping
Firefly III has 24,649 GitHub stars, 2,289 forks, 169 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ezBookkeeping has 5,598 stars, 687 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Firefly III leads on adoption by 340% (24,649 vs 5,598 stars). Firefly III is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0; ezBookkeeping is written in Go under MIT. Firefly III has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, ezBookkeeping 12%. Firefly III was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 6 topic tags (accounting, docker, expenses, finance), 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.
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Side by side
| Firefly III | ezBookkeeping | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 5.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | PHP | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 687 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Firefly III if
- You weight community size — 25K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ezBookkeeping if
- You want the ezBookkeeping feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and ezBookkeeping fits your workflow better
About Firefly III
Firefly III is an AGPL 3.0 licensed, self hosted personal finance manager written in PHP that uses double entry bookkeeping to track income, expenses, budgets, categories, tags and savings goals, and it is built for individuals and households who want to own and control their own financial data instead of renting a cloud accounting subscription.
read the full Firefly III overview →
About ezBookkeeping
ezBookkeeping is a self hosted personal finance application written in Go and released under the MIT license. It lives in the self hosted bookkeeping ecosystem, alongside the Docker, NAS and home server tooling that its topics list names. The project records daily transactions, imports data from a range of external sources, and offers search, filtering, visualization and analysis over the resulting history. It ships separate interfaces for mobile and desktop, and it is packaged as a Progressive Web App so it can be added to a phone home screen and used in a native like way. It is distributed primarily as a Docker…
read the full ezBookkeeping overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Firefly III or ezBookkeeping more popular?
Firefly III has 24,649 GitHub stars and ezBookkeeping has 5,598. Firefly III has the larger community by that measure.
Are Firefly III and ezBookkeeping free?
Both are open source. Firefly III is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and ezBookkeeping under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Firefly III and ezBookkeeping?
Firefly III is written in PHP and ezBookkeeping in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Firefly III or ezBookkeeping?
Choose Firefly III if you want the larger community (24,649 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ezBookkeeping if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.