Countbean gives you a cloud book — a private, git-versioned Beancount ledger — that an AI keeps current for you. It's just text, so you own it completely.
Because a cloud book is plain text, an AI agent can read your whole ledger and write correct double-entry transactions straight into it. Add the Countbean skill to Claude, say what happened in plain English, and review the diff. That's the whole workflow.
One click creates a private, HTTPS-secured cloud book — Beancount + the Fava web UI, running on Fly.io. No servers, no Docker, no setup.
Add the Countbean skill to Claude and point it at your book. Now the AI can read and write your ledger directly.
"Log these transactions." "Categorize my bank export." "What did I spend on infra in Q2?" The AI does the double-entry; you never type a posting.
Every change is a Git commit and a readable diff. See the numbers in Fava's dashboards. Clone or export the whole thing anytime.
Every other accounting tool keeps your financial history in a database you rent access to. Countbean keeps it in files you can read, grep, diff, and walk away with.
Your books live in a plain .beancount file. Nothing proprietary, nothing to decode — a format grep can read in 2050.
Every entry — human or AI — is a commit. Full history, blame, and one-line revert. The most auditable books you'll ever keep.
The export button isn't a feature — it's the whole design. Clone your book and self-host the same open-source stack any day you like.
Books that must balance. Beancount validates every entry and rejects the ones that don't — so AI-written transactions are checked, not trusted.
Fava — the best UI in plain-text accounting — gives you dashboards, net-worth charts, multi-currency, investments and lots. Hosted, zero setup.
Your book auto-stops when you're away and wakes in a second on request. Tiny footprint — which is how we keep the price this low.
| Countbean | QuickBooks | Spreadsheet | |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI writes your books | Agentic — reads & writes | Insights, gated to $115+ tiers | No |
| You own the data | Plain text + Git | Locked in their cloud | Yes, but fragile |
| Real double-entry | Yes, validated | Yes | Manual, error-prone |
| Audit trail | Every change is a diff | Limited log | None |
| Full export / no lock-in | It's the whole design | Painful | Yes |
| Starting price | Free · $9/mo | ~$20–115+/mo | Free |
Your book costs us about a dollar a month to run, so the margins go into the AI — not into gating it behind a $115 tier.
Kick the tires. Perfect for the plain-text-accounting curious.
For solopreneurs, indie hackers, and freelancers who want it handled.
For small businesses, agencies, and bookkeepers running many books.
No lock-in, ever — cancel and clone your book. Add-ons: always-on machine · extra seats · extra books.
Spin up a cloud book in a click, connect Claude, and tell it your money situation. The double-entry is on us.