The price anchor
| Ledgerly | Expensify | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $0 — no subscription | $5/user/mo |
| Annual | $0 after purchase | $60 |
| 5-year total | $79 | $300 |
| 10-year total | $79 | $600 |
Subscription figures from the vendor's published pricing ($5/user/mo, ~$60/yr); the Ledgerly column is the full price, paid once.
Break-even analysis
Pays for itself vs Expensify in about 16 months for a solo user — faster with every additional team member, since there's no per-seat fee.
- After 1 year: Ledgerly has cost you $79 total — Expensify has cost $60.
- After 3 years: Ledgerly is still $79 — the subscription is at $180.
- After 5 years: Ledgerly is still $79 — the subscription is at $300.
What you get for $79 once
- 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%.
- Reports & charts. Month picker, spend-by-category donut, daily spend bars, top vendors, month-over-month delta.
- No renewal, ever. The license does not expire and there is no per-seat meter — $79 is the whole price.
Pricing questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — the full source is MIT at github.com/bensblueprints/ledgerly-expenses-mvp. The $79 buys the packaged installer, 1-click setup and lifetime updates.
Does the receipt OCR upload my images anywhere?
No. tesseract.js runs client-side — in your browser or inside the desktop app's window — and the worker, wasm core and language data are all served from the app itself, never a CDN. Receipts with card numbers and addresses on them stay on your disk.
How accurate is the OCR?
It parses vendor, amount and date and prefills the form flagged for your review — it never auto-saves an expense. Expensify's SmartScan, backed by cloud models and human fallback, is honestly more accurate on crumpled or unusual receipts; the trade is that every one of those receipts goes to their servers.
Does it do approval workflows and corporate card feeds?
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.
Ledgerly — $79, one time
Or get Ledgerly plus every other app in the suite: the OneTimeSuite bundle is currently $97, one time.