# Plain Text Accounting privacy rating

An approach to bookkeeping that keeps records in plain text files and processes them with command-line tools such as Ledger, hledger and Beancount.

## Summary

Plain Text Accounting scores 100 out of 100 (grade A) on the budgeting criteria. It meets 3 of 3 criteria: open source, no trackers or telemetry and no ads or data sales.

- Website: https://plaintextaccounting.org
- Home page trackers: Cloudflare Web Analytics (cookieless analytics), Google Fonts (not scored)
- Category: [Budgeting](https://privacyratings.com/budgeting/)
- Grade: A (100/100)

## Criteria

| Criterion | Answer | Note | Evidence |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Open source | Yes | An ecosystem of tools rather than one product. The main tools are open source: Ledger (BSD-3-Clause), hledger (GPL-3.0) and Beancount (GPL-2.0). | https://github.com/ledger/ledger/blob/master/LICENSE.md |
| No trackers or telemetry | Yes | The main tools are offline command-line programs with no telemetry or analytics in the source code. | https://github.com/hledgerorg/hledger |
| No ads or data sales | Yes | The main tools are volunteer projects funded by donations, with no ads. | https://hledger.org/sponsor.html |

Source: https://privacyratings.com/budgeting/plain-text-accounting/
Edit: https://github.com/privacyratings/privacyratings.com/edit/main/ratings/budgeting/plain-text-accounting.md