head to head · open source
Polar vs Bigcapital
Polar has 10,454 GitHub stars, 811 forks, 141 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Bigcapital has 4,040 stars, 569 forks, 214 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Polar leads on adoption by 159% (10,454 vs 4,040 stars). Polar is written in Python under Apache-2.0; Bigcapital is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Polar has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Bigcapital 14%. Polar was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (payments), 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
| Polar | Bigcapital | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 10K | ★ 4.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 811 | ⑂ 569 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Polar if
- You weight community size — 10K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- 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 Polar
Website • Docs • API Reference Polar: A billing platform for the intelligence era Turn usage into revenue. Polar is the financial layer for a new generation of intelligent software, built for AI startups that need to charge for tokens, agents, and compute without building billing infrastructure from scratch. Ship any pricing model in an afternoon. Usage billing, subscriptions, seats, credits, trials, and discounts. Compose them however your product charges. Meter what matters. Bill tokens, API calls, agent runs, GPU seconds, and storage with precision down to the event. Checkouts that convert , realtime metrics…
read the full Polar 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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Polar or Bigcapital more popular?
Polar has 10,454 GitHub stars and Bigcapital has 4,040. Polar has the larger community by that measure.
Are Polar and Bigcapital free?
Both are open source. Polar is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Bigcapital under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Polar and Bigcapital?
Polar is written in Python 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, Polar or Bigcapital?
Choose Polar if you want the larger community (10,454 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Bigcapital if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.