Free Accounting Software for Nonprofits
Accounting software that is both free and built for nonprofits is rare: of these eleven, OpenPetra is the only one with no paid tier at all that was written for nonprofit work, and you have to install it on your own server. For a small organization that wants something in the browser today, Zoho Books is free with invoices, bank reconciliation and more than fifty reports, as long as revenue stays under $50K a year.
The options split on how they are free. Four have a free cloud plan with a ceiling (a user cap, a revenue or spending limit, one bank account). Four are open source, free to download and run yourself. Two are free desktop programs, and QuickBooks Online is donated through TechSoup for an admin fee. They also split on who they were built for: seven are small-business tools, so restricted funds and grants have to be improvised from ordinary categories.
Our picks
- A small charity with one treasurer: Zoho Books. A full free product up to $50K in yearly revenue, for one user plus an accountant, with paid plans from $20 a month.
- Church fund reporting: Grain Ledger. Real fund accounting with unlimited funds on the free Starter tier, for churches with up to $20k in monthly expenses.
- When your accountant already uses QuickBooks: QuickBooks Online (donated via TechSoup). Fund accounting, donation tracking and Form 990 support, for a TechSoup admin fee covering 1 year and 5 users.
- No subscription, ever, on one computer: GnuCash. Open source under the GPL with no paid tier, where nested accounts can stand in for restricted funds.
At a glance
| Option | Paid Plan From | Free Option | Where It Runs | Built For | Free Plan Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $19source | Free plansource | Cloudsource | Small businessessource | Single user; bank import is paidsource | |
| $20source | Free plansource | Cloudsource | Small businessessource | Revenue under $50K a yearsource | |
| $15source | Free plansource | Cloudsource | Small businessessource | 1 connected bank accountsource | |
| Freesource | Open sourcesource | Desktopsource | Small businessessource | Nonesource | |
| $59source | Free desktop appsource | Desktopsource | Small businessessource | Single user, no remote accesssource | |
| $12source | Open sourcesource | Cloud or self-hostedsource | Small businessessource | Free only if you self-hostsource | |
| Free desktop appsource | Desktopsource | Small businessessource | Fewer than five employeessource | ||
| Freesource | Open sourcesource | Self-hostedsource | Nonprofits and churchessource | Nonesource | |
| $5source | Open sourcesource | Cloud or self-hostedsource | Any size (full ERP)source | Free only if you self-hostsource | |
| $38source | Donated (admin fee)source | Cloudsource | Nonprofits and churchessource | Admin fee; 1 year, 5 userssource | |
| $70source | Free plansource | Cloudsource | Nonprofits and churchessource | Up to $20k monthly expensessource |
Free plan limits that bite first
Each free cloud plan runs out in a different place. Wave is free for one user, and bank import is on the paid plan, from $19 a month. Zoho Books stops being free past $50K in yearly revenue, then costs $20. ZipBooks allows one connected bank account, which is awkward if restricted funds sit in a separate account, and its paid plan starts at $15. Grain Ledger's free tier ends at $20k in monthly expenses, and the next plan is $70.
The two free desktop programs cap people rather than money. Manager's free edition is single-user with no remote access, so a treasurer and a bookkeeper cannot both work in it, and its cloud edition is $59 a month. NCH Express Accounts is free for organizations with fewer than five employees.
Which tools handle restricted funds and donations
Only three of the eleven say they were built for nonprofits and churches: OpenPetra, Grain Ledger and QuickBooks Online through TechSoup. QuickBooks is the only one documenting all three of fund accounting, donation tracking and Form 990 support, and it is also the only one that is not free, since the TechSoup fee recurs every year.
The other eight are general tools. ZipBooks and Akaunting both publish church landing pages, but the products underneath are general bookkeeping. In GnuCash, treasurers use nested accounts to stand in for restricted funds, a pattern its community documents, though nothing in the software is labeled for nonprofits.
Self-hosting: free software, real setup
Akaunting and ERPNext are free only on your own server. Otherwise Akaunting's hosted plans start at $12 a month, and ERPNext's maker sells managed hosting from $5. OpenPetra is server software with no hosted plan listed. ERPNext is the most capable of the three, a full ERP with inventory, projects and HR, which also makes it the most work to configure. To use any of them free, someone in the organization has to be comfortable running a web server.
The options in detail
Wave
Wave's Starter plan is the best-known genuinely free bookkeeping tool, and it is unusually generous on volume: unlimited invoices, bills and bookkeeping records, with real double-entry accounting underneath. The catch for an organization is that Starter is single-user, and the conveniences that save a treasurer time, automatic bank import, receipt capture and merged transactions, are all on the paid Pro plan. Nothing in it speaks the nonprofit's language either, so restricted funds and grants have to be tracked with ordinary categories. Best for a very small charity where one volunteer keeps the books and enters transactions by hand.
Zoho Books
Zoho Books gives away a full accounting product, not a stripped-down one: the free tier includes invoices, expenses, bank reconciliation, a customer portal and more than fifty reports. The gate is revenue rather than features, so it fits a small charity comfortably and stops fitting the moment the organization grows past the threshold. Access is limited to one user plus an accountant, which suits a treasurer-and-bookkeeper setup but not a finance committee. It is built for businesses, so fund tracking has to be improvised from categories and reports.
ZipBooks
ZipBooks keeps a permanently free Starter tier with unlimited invoices, unlimited customers and vendors, digital payments and basic reports. The one hard limit is a single connected bank account, which is fine for an organization running everything through one checking account and awkward for one with a separate savings or restricted-funds account. The company also publishes a church-focused landing page, but the underlying product is a general small-business tool rather than fund accounting software. It is the lightest of the cloud options here, which is both the appeal and the ceiling.
GnuCash
GnuCash is the long-running open-source desktop ledger, licensed under the GNU GPL with no tier above it to upgrade to. Because it is a real double-entry system with an unrestricted account tree, treasurers often use nested accounts to stand in for restricted funds, and the community documents that pattern, but nothing in the software is labelled for nonprofits. It runs on the computer rather than in a browser, so there is no bank-feed convenience and no second person working in it at the same time. Choose it when data ownership and zero cost matter more than polish or collaboration.
Manager
Manager's desktop edition is free outright, with no time limit, no usage cap and no ads, and it is considerably more full-featured than most free downloads: full double-entry accounting, custom reports and multiple currencies. The trade is spelled out plainly by the maker, which funds the free desktop app by selling the cloud edition: the desktop version is single-user and has no remote access, so a treasurer and a bookkeeper cannot both be in the books. It is proprietary rather than open source, so the data is yours but the code is not. A good fit for one person who keeps the accounts on one machine.
Akaunting
Akaunting is open-source accounting you install on your own server, where it is free with unlimited invoices, customers and vendors. The important detail is that free means self-hosted: the hosted plans on akaunting.com are all paid, and several conveniences arrive as separate apps you buy from its marketplace. The company publishes a church accounting page, but the core product is general small-business bookkeeping. Worth it if someone in the organization is comfortable running a web server; otherwise the setup cost is real.
NCH Express Accounts
Express Accounts is a downloadable Windows and Mac bookkeeping program whose free edition is licensed by organization size rather than by time, so it does not expire. NCH is explicit that the free version omits features aimed at larger organizations and carries some quota limits, and that it is licensed for non-commercial or small-business use, which a small charity generally satisfies. There is no fund accounting and no donation tracking; it produces the standard business reports. Reasonable for a tiny all-volunteer group that wants installed software and will never grow past a handful of people.
OpenPetra
OpenPetra is the rarest thing on this list: software written for nonprofit administration specifically, and given away under the GPL. It combines a contact database with the accounts, and its stated speciality is processing and receipting donations, which is exactly the part general business tools cannot do. The cost is effort rather than money, since it is server software you install yourself, and its documentation and community are smaller than any commercial option here. Try the public demo before committing, and expect to need someone technical for the setup.
ERPNext
ERPNext is a full open-source ERP that happens to include accounting, and its maker is unambiguous that the software itself is free forever if you host it yourself. That makes it the most capable free option here by a wide margin and also the heaviest: it is a system to be configured, not an app to be opened. Frappe sells managed hosting, so the practical choice is paying for a server or paying them. Sensible only for a larger nonprofit that already has technical staff and wants inventory, projects or HR in the same system as the ledger.
QuickBooks Online (donated via TechSoup)
This is the answer most nonprofit finance guides give, and it is not quite free: Intuit donates QuickBooks Online through TechSoup, and eligible organizations pay TechSoup an administrative fee for a one-year subscription rather than the retail price. What that buys is the one product on this list with fund accounting, donation tracking and Form 990 support documented for nonprofits, plus accountants everywhere who already know it. The renewal is annual and the fee recurs, so it is a standing line in the budget rather than a one-off. Include it in the comparison if the organization can clear TechSoup's eligibility check.
Grain Ledger
Grain Ledger is a newer cloud product built specifically for church and ministry finance, and its free Starter tier is real fund accounting rather than a trial: unlimited funds, accrual and cash basis, one bank connection. Eligibility is set by spending rather than by feature lockout, so a small congregation can stay on it indefinitely and a growing one will hit the ceiling. Being young is the risk worth naming, since it has a much shorter track record than anything else here and its own blog is a large part of what is written about it. Look at it first if the organization is a church and fund reporting is the pain point.
How we researched this
"Free" means four different things in this table, and the Free Option column names which one applies; a product was included only if its accounting itself comes free or donated in one of those ways. That ruled out Aplos, which is paid after a trial, and Alignmint, whose free plan covers donor management and giving pages while fund accounting sits on a $142 a month tier. Nonprofit Treasurer, still recommended in older roundups, is no longer online. Odoo Community was left out because much of its accounting is gated to the paid edition, and Frappe Books because it is a thinner product from ERPNext's maker. Built For is each maker's own description of its audience, not our judgment of fit.
In the Paid Plan From column, $0 means no paid plan exists (GnuCash and OpenPetra), and QuickBooks' $38 is TechSoup's recurring admin fee rather than a subscription tier. The NCH cell is blank because NCH sells a one-time license and shows no price on its own page. Pricing and free-tier terms for Grain Ledger, Zoho Books, ZipBooks, Akaunting and Manager were rechecked on the vendors' pages in September 2026. Free-tier thresholds and TechSoup's fee are set by the vendors and can change, so confirm them, and TechSoup eligibility, before you move your books.