head to head · open source
Polar vs hledger
Polar has 10,270 GitHub stars, 787 forks, 141 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hledger has 4,709 stars, 414 forks, 328 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Polar leads on adoption by 118% (10,270 vs 4,709 stars). Polar is written in Python under Apache-2.0; hledger is written in Haskell under GPL-3.0. Polar has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, hledger 9%. Polar was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | hledger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 10K | ★ 4.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Haskell |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 787 | ⑂ 414 |
| 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 hledger if
- You want the hledger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Haskell
- You evaluated both and hledger fits your workflow better
About Polar
Polar is an open source billing platform and payment infrastructure project for digital products, SaaS applications, and AI workloads. It is written in Python, licensed under Apache 2.0, and built around FastAPI, Next.js, React, and Turborepo. The project positions itself as a financial layer for software that needs to charge for tokens, agents, compute, subscriptions, and usage based models.
read the full Polar overview →
About hledger
hledger is lightweight, cross platform, multi currency, double entry accounting software that stores all data in a plain text journal format. It lives in the Plain Text Accounting ecosystem, a community of tools and practices built around the plaintextaccounting.org project, and it is inspired by and partly compatible with Ledger CLI, with Beancount files interconvertible as well. The project is written in Haskell, licensed under GPL 3.0 or later, has been developed since 2007, and offers command line, terminal, web, mobile, and editor/IDE interfaces.
read the full hledger overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Polar or hledger more popular?
Polar has 10,270 GitHub stars and hledger has 4,709. Polar has the larger community by that measure.
Are Polar and hledger free?
Both are open source. Polar is licensed under Apache-2.0 and hledger under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Polar and hledger?
Polar is written in Python and hledger in Haskell. 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 hledger?
Choose Polar if you want the larger community (10,270 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose hledger if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.