About Akaunting
Akaunting is an accounting application delivered over the web and aimed at small businesses and freelancers. It is built with Laravel, Vue, Tailwind and a RESTful API, and its modular structure supports an app store where users and developers can extend the core product with additional features.
The topics show its scope: invoicing, billing, payments, expenses, budgets, bookkeeping and balances, with further hints at payroll, CRM and ERP use. It installs with Composer and npm, needs PHP 8.1 or higher and Node.js 18 or 20, and works with MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite behind Apache, Nginx or IIS. An optional command seeds sample data for trying it.
The project offers a forum for support, documentation, a developer portal and the app store. The repository lists the license as Other, so check the licence file for terms. Because it is PHP and Laravel based, it suits teams that want to run and customize their own accounting system on a standard web hosting stack.
Key features
- Invoicing and billing
- Expense and payment tracking
- Modular architecture with an app store
- RESTful API for integrations
- Multiple database options
- Laravel and Vue codebase
- Optional sample data seeding
Good fit for
- →Bookkeeping for freelancers
- →Invoicing for small businesses
- →Extending accounting with custom apps
- Tags
- accounting
- invoicing
- bookkeeping
- laravel
- php
- small-business
- expenses
- self-hosted
- erp
Akaunting: questions and answers
- What is Akaunting used for?
- Akaunting is a modular online accounting application for small businesses and freelancers, built with Laravel and Vue, covering invoices, expenses and payments, extensible through apps. It is a good fit for bookkeeping for freelancers, invoicing for small businesses and extending accounting with custom apps.
- Is Akaunting open source?
- Yes. Akaunting is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at akaunting/akaunting and is written mainly in PHP.
- Is Akaunting free?
- Yes. Akaunting is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence. Paid plans are also available, starting at $12 per month.
- Can I self-host Akaunting?
- Yes. Akaunting can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
- What is Akaunting an alternative to?
- Akaunting is an open-source alternative to QuickBooks, Xero, Zoho Books and Wave. Other open-source alternatives to QuickBooks include Bigcapital, Invoice Ninja and GnuCash.
- Is Akaunting actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to Akaunting was on 29 September 2026, and the latest release is 3.2.4, published on 17 September 2026. The project has 10k stars on GitHub.
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