Circula

Best Self Hosted Alternatives to Circula

A curated collection of the 2 best self hosted alternatives to Circula.

Cloud expense management platform for companies that handles employee expense reports, travel expenses, mileage and per diems, with approval workflows and integrations to accounting and ERP systems.

Alternatives List

#1
TaxHacker

TaxHacker

Self-hosted AI accounting app that extracts data from receipts and invoices, supports custom prompts and categories, and exports tax-ready transaction data.

TaxHacker screenshot

TaxHacker is a self-hosted accounting app for freelancers and small businesses that uses LLMs to extract structured transaction data from receipts, invoices, and PDFs. It helps centralize documents, categorize transactions, and prepare exports for reporting and tax workflows.

Key Features

  • AI-assisted data extraction from photos, scans, and PDFs (dates, vendors, totals, taxes, line items)
  • Custom fields and custom prompts to extract additional, user-defined metadata
  • Auto-categorization and organization by projects and categories
  • Multi-currency handling with historical exchange-rate conversion (including popular cryptocurrencies)
  • Search and filtering across transactions and recognized document content
  • CSV export and data archiving for portability, including attached documents

Use Cases

  • Automating expense tracking from receipts and supplier invoices
  • Building structured transaction logs for accountants or tax filing
  • Organizing multi-project freelance or small-business finances with customizable categories

Limitations and Considerations

  • Relies on external LLM provider APIs for AI extraction (provider configuration required)
  • Early-stage project; features and data extraction quality may evolve and change

TaxHacker is a practical option if you want an Excel-like transaction database backed by AI-powered document parsing and flexible prompting. It emphasizes customization, reporting-oriented exports, and keeping financial documents under your control.

1kstars
127forks
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#2
Receipt Wrangler

Receipt Wrangler

Multi-platform receipt management suite with an API, desktop and mobile apps for capture, OCR extraction, indexing, and searchable archives.

Receipt Wrangler is a multi-platform receipt management suite provided as a single monorepo. It includes a backend API plus desktop and mobile clients for capturing, extracting, indexing, and organizing receipts and expense documents.

Key Features

  • Monorepo containing a backend API and native clients for desktop and mobile to provide a consistent stack and integrations
  • Receipt capture via image or PDF import with automated text extraction for indexing
  • Metadata parsing and organization (vendor, date, totals, tags) to speed categorization and search
  • Searchable, indexed receipt archive with full-text search across extracted receipt content
  • REST API for integrations, synchronisation, and programmatic access from other tools
  • Cross-platform mobile client built with Dart/Flutter and desktop/client components implemented in TypeScript
  • Container-friendly development and deployment artifacts to simplify local and hosted setups

Use Cases

  • Personal or small-business expense capture and recordkeeping with searchable receipt archives
  • Archiving receipts and invoices for bookkeeping, tax preparation, or reimbursement workflows
  • Integrating receipt ingestion and metadata into accounting or expense management systems via the API

Limitations and Considerations

  • OCR and text-extraction quality depends on the chosen OCR engine and input image quality; multi-language support may vary
  • Setup and development require familiarity with TypeScript/Node and Dart/Flutter, and may rely on Docker for deployment
  • Feature completeness and polishing of mobile/desktop clients depend on the repository's current maturity and contributions

Receipt Wrangler is suited for users who want a self-hostable receipt ingestion and management solution with API access and cross-platform clients. Its monorepo design centralizes components for easier development and integration.

190stars
9forks
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Why choose an open source alternative?

  • •Data ownership: Keep your data on your own servers
  • •No vendor lock-in: Freedom to switch or modify at any time
  • •Cost savings: Reduce or eliminate subscription fees
  • •Transparency: Audit the code and know exactly what's running