Wave
The value is the network, the data or the infrastructure. Keep paying.
Accounting and invoicing for very small businesses: double-entry books, bank feeds, invoices and payments, with a free tier that covers most of it.
Do not write your own accounting. Build the invoicing and export properly. WHY NOT - Double-entry books that survive an audit are not a side project, and bank feeds require a licensed aggregator WHAT TO BUILD STACK - SQLite, a small Node app, Stripe for payment links INVOICING - Clients, invoices, line items, payments - Gapless sequential numbering per year, allocated in a transaction - Issued invoices immutable; corrections are credit notes EXPENSES - A row per expense with a category, a date and an attached receipt file - Categories that match your accountant's chart of accounts, agreed with them first THE EXPORT THAT MATTERS - A CSV your accountant can import, in the format they ask for - Get that format from them before writing anything else BANK RECONCILIATION - Import the bank CSV and match by amount and date within a window; leave anything ambiguous for a human Include the schema, the numbering transaction and the export.
What you lose
- Bank feeds — connections to thousands of institutions, which is a licensed, paid integration you cannot arrange alone
- Double-entry accounting that an accountant will accept at year end
- Reports in the shape a tax filing needs, kept current as rules change
If you would rather not build
- Firefly III, for personal finance rather than company books
- An accountant with a spreadsheet, which is often cheaper
The escape hatch
open source · no votes, no paid placement
Invoice Ninja
$0Invoicing and expenses, self-hostable; not full accounting.
invoiceninja/invoiceninjafree · open source
Akaunting
$0Self-hosted accounting with double-entry books and reports.
akaunting/akauntingfree · open source
Why this verdict
our own opinion · changed only by a person
28/100
Verdict no at 28. Invoicing is replaceable; bookkeeping and bank feeds are not, and the free tier makes building hard to justify anyway.
History
tracked since 10 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten
Questions about Wave
answered from the record above
Is Wave free?
No — the plan we track is $16 a month. Pro at around $16/month billed monthly; the basic accounting tier is free and payment processing is charged per transaction.
Can you replace Wave by building your own?
KEEP IT. The value is the network, the data or the infrastructure. Keep paying. Replacement score 28 out of 100, build time longer than it saves. Read what you lose before you decide.
How much does Wave cost?
$16 a month on Pro — $192 a year. Recorded 10 Aug 2026.
What do you lose by replacing Wave?
Bank feeds — connections to thousands of institutions, which is a licensed, paid integration you cannot arrange alone; Double-entry accounting that an accountant will accept at year end; Reports in the shape a tax filing needs, kept current as rules change. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.
Is there an open-source alternative to Wave?
Yes: Invoice Ninja, Akaunting. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.
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