Reconstructed · Clean-room · MIT-derived

Bookkeeping that stays on your computer.

SlowBooks Pro is a free, source-available accounting app for Mac and Linux. No cloud, no subscription, no account to create. Your books live on your hard drive — where they belong.

Get SlowBooks View on GitHub
Native on Mac & Linux Docker for Windows No telemetry · no account
SPECIMEN · DASHBOARD · v2026.04
SlowBooks Pro 2026 — Company Snapshot
SlowBooks Pro dashboard with total receivables, overdue invoices, active customers, and monthly revenue chart
Connected: localhost:5432 39 accounts loaded Ready
§01 · What makes SlowBooks different

Your data, your machine, your books.

Every other accounting app today wants you to host your books on their servers. SlowBooks doesn’t. It runs on the computer in front of you, and that’s the whole point.

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Completely local

No SaaS backend. No third-party cloud. Your ledger is a PostgreSQL database on your hardware. Close the laptop and your books close with it.

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Free forever

No free trial, no freemium tier, no “upgrade to Pro” paywall. Source-available under a license that permits personal, internal, and enterprise use at no cost.

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You own the data

PostgreSQL backups, IIF exports, CSV downloads, PDF statements. Walk away to another tool any time. No lock-in and no contract to exit.

§02 · Demonstration

A full day of bookkeeping, in under a minute.

Create an invoice, receive a payment, run a P&L. All the things you’d do in QuickBooks — done locally, done fast, done without a subscription.

6.3 seconds
From open invoice form to posted journal entry.
SlowBooks Pro 2026 — Create Invoice
Invoice entry screen with line items, totals, and customer details
Posted to journal DR=CR Ready
Local latency < 5 ms
Cloud round-trips 0
Monthly fee $0.00
Data leaves machine Never
§03 · Install

Pick your platform.

Mac and Linux run SlowBooks natively. Windows runs it via Docker Desktop — same app, same data, one extra dependency.

Native on macOS

Homebrew handles PostgreSQL and the PDF toolchain. Python 3.12+ recommended.

brew install postgresql@16 cairo pango gdk-pixbuf libffi
brew services start postgresql@16
createuser bookkeeper -P    # password: bookkeeper
createdb bookkeeper -O bookkeeper

git clone https://github.com/VonHoltenCodes/SlowBooks-Pro-2026.git
cd SlowBooks-Pro-2026
pip install -r requirements.txt
alembic upgrade head
python scripts/seed_database.py
python run.py

Then open http://localhost:3001.

§04 · Provenance

A love letter to software that respects you.

Owns nothing. Phones home to nobody. Runs on hardware you can unplug. Accounting software should be the last thing you’d rent.

“Intuit’s activation servers died in 2017. The hard drive died in 2024. We just wanted to print invoices.”
§05 · Questions

Frequently asked.

Is SlowBooks really free? What’s the catch?

No catch. SlowBooks is source-available under a license that permits free use for personal, educational, and internal business purposes — including at commercial enterprises. The only restriction is you can’t repackage and resell it as your own paid product or hosted service. See the LICENSE for the full text.

Is it “open source”?

The source is public on GitHub and you can read, modify, and redistribute it. Technically the license is “source-available” rather than OSI-certified open source, because of the No-Commercial-Resale clause. In practice, if you’re using it to run your own business, there is no functional difference.

Why is it not on the cloud?

Because accounting data is the last thing that should live on someone else’s server. Your financial history, customer information, payroll, and tax records shouldn’t be subject to some other company’s pricing decisions, breach history, or terms-of-service updates. SlowBooks sidesteps the entire question.

How do I back up my data?

SlowBooks creates PostgreSQL-native backups on demand from the Settings screen. You can also export everything as IIF (for re-import into QuickBooks), CSV, or PDF. If your computer is already backed up by Time Machine, a cloud drive, or an external disk, SlowBooks’ data is already safe along with the rest.

Does it work on Windows?

Yes, via Docker Desktop — install Docker once, run docker compose up, done. A true Windows native installer is on the roadmap, but the Docker path is the supported and tested Windows story today.

Can I import from QuickBooks?

Yes. SlowBooks imports IIF files exported from QuickBooks Desktop (including the finicky Mac QB format with quoted thousands separators). It also has OAuth integration with QuickBooks Online for direct import.