Ledgerly and Expensify solve the same problem from opposite directions: one is source-available software you can own outright for $29, the other is a subscription at $5/user/mo run entirely on someone else's servers.
Head to head
| Ledgerly | Expensify | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $29 once | $5/user/mo ($60/user/yr) |
| Receipt OCR | Local, in-browser, free forever | Cloud |
| Your receipts leave your machine | Never | Yes — their cloud |
| Multi-currency with rate history | Included | Paid tier |
| Recurring expenses | Included | Paid tier |
| Budgets with alerts | Included | Paid tier |
| Cost over 3 years (solo) | $29 | $180 |
| Cancel and keep your history? | Nothing to cancel — it's your SQLite file | Cancel = lose access |
What Ledgerly does well
- Local receipt OCR — Drop a JPG/PNG receipt and tesseract.js runs entirely in your browser — no image ever leaves your machine. Vendor, amount and date are parsed and prefilled for your review; OCR never auto-saves.
- Fast expense entry — Quick-add row + full form: amount, currency, category, vendor, date, project, payment method, notes, receipt image.
- Filterable, sortable list — Date range, category, project, vendor/notes search, sortable columns.
- Categories & budgets — Editable category set with color + icon. Monthly budgets per category with progress bars that shift amber past 80% and red past 100%.
What Expensify still does better
No — Expensify genuinely wins for teams needing multi-level approvals, direct card feeds and reimbursement rails. Ledgerly is built for freelancers, solo consultants and small businesses tracking expenses for taxes and reporting.
Which one should you pick
If your workflow depends on Expensify's specific integrations or you'd rather not run anything yourself, stay put — that's a legitimate call. If you're comfortable owning the tool and want to stop paying $5/user/mo for a job your own hardware can do, Ledgerly pays for itself and then some: pays for itself vs Expensify in about 6 months for a solo user — faster with every additional team member, since there's no per-seat fee.
Try Ledgerly — $29, once
Expenses, budgets, multi-currency, recurring templates and in-browser receipt OCR — no cloud, no per-seat fee.