Hosted plain-text accounting

Tell Claude your money situation.
Get a real ledger.

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.

Early access — Countbean is in private beta. Join the waitlist and we'll email you an invite.

Live on Fly.io ·  Fava web UI ·  Git-backed, fully portable
The AI-native part

Connect Claude. Talk. Your books write themselves.

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.

◑ You, in Claude
Set up my money situation — checking, savings, a business account, and my Stripe income.
Done. I created your opening balances and account tree, and wired Stripe payouts to Income:Consulting. Committed to your book.
Log these 3 receipts and last month's bank export.
Categorized 47 transactions, matched 3 receipts, flagged 1 for review. All balanced ✓
◐ Your ledger, updated
◆ 5 commits pushed · 1 flagged for your review
How it works

From zero to booked in four steps.

STEP 01

Spin up a book

One click creates a private, HTTPS-secured cloud book — Beancount + the Fava web UI, running on Fly.io. No servers, no Docker, no setup.

STEP 02

Connect Claude

Add the Countbean skill to Claude and point it at your book. Now the AI can read and write your ledger directly.

STEP 03

Just talk

"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.

STEP 04

Review & own

Every change is a Git commit and a readable diff. See the numbers in Fava's dashboards. Clone or export the whole thing anytime.

Why plain text + Git

You own it like a repo — because it is one.

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.

It's just text

Your books live in a plain .beancount file. Nothing proprietary, nothing to decode — a format grep can read in 2050.

Versioned in Git

Every entry — human or AI — is a commit. Full history, blame, and one-line revert. The most auditable books you'll ever keep.

Zero lock-in

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.

Real double-entry

Books that must balance. Beancount validates every entry and rejects the ones that don't — so AI-written transactions are checked, not trusted.

Serious reporting

Fava — the best UI in plain-text accounting — gives you dashboards, net-worth charts, multi-currency, investments and cost lots. Hosted, zero setup.

Sleeps when idle

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.

The honest comparison

Countbean vs. QuickBooks vs. a spreadsheet.

How Countbean compares to QuickBooks and a spreadsheet across AI bookkeeping, data ownership, double-entry, audit trail, export, and price.
Countbean QuickBooks Spreadsheet
AI writes your booksAgentic — reads & writesInsights, gated to higher tiersNo
You own the dataPlain text + GitLocked in their cloudYes, but fragile
Real double-entryYes, validatedYesManual, error-prone
Audit trailEvery change is a diffLimited logNone
Full export / no lock-inIt's the whole designPainfulYes
Starting priceFree · $9/mo~$20–115/mo (as of 2026)Free
Pricing · Early access

Less than QuickBooks' cheapest plan. AI included, not upsold.

Your book costs us about a dollar a month to run, so the margins go into the AI — not into gating it behind a premium tier.

These are our planned launch tiers. Countbean is in private beta today — join the waitlist and we'll invite you as spots open.

Starter book
$0

Kick the tires. Perfect for the plain-text-accounting curious.

  • 1 cloud book with the full Fava UI
  • Git-backed ledger, browser editing
  • 50 AI actions / month
  • Community support
Start free
Most popular plan Solo
$9/mo

For solopreneurs, indie hackers, and freelancers who want it handled.

  • Connect Claude — unlimited natural-language entry & categorization
  • Bank / CSV & receipt ingestion
  • Daily Git backups, multi-currency & investments
  • Email support
Get Solo →
Business
$29/mo

For small businesses, agencies, and bookkeepers running many books.

  • Everything in Solo, plus multiple books
  • Up to 5 collaborator seats with roles
  • Priority AI + always-warm machine
  • Export API & priority support
Get Business →

No lock-in, ever — cancel and clone your book. Add-ons: always-on machine · extra seats · extra books.

Ledger-in-a-box, in the cloud

Your books, owned by you and written by AI.

Spin up a cloud book in a click, connect Claude, and tell it your money situation. The double-entry is on us.