Charts and Graphs

Tips and techniques for producing graphical charts from hledger data.

The most general, lowest-common-denominator way is to produce simple CSV output from a report and then make charts from that using the tool of your choice. Eg, drag the CSV file into a spreadsheet and use its charting tools. The balance command with --layout=bare and -N/--no-total is most often used. Eg:

hledger bal --layout bare -N expenses -o expenses.csv

The quickest way to get polished, ready-to-use charts as of 2025 is probably to export to Beancount format and then use Fava, a mature web UI with ready-made charts. (If this doesn't work, you may need to alias some account names, eg; see Beancount output):

hledger print -o export.beancount
fava export.beancount

Here are some other ways:

Charting tools built for hledger

Simplest first:

hledger-web

hledger-web has a simple balance over time chart, in the register view. (demo)

hledger web

hledger-bar

hledger-bar (2023) is a bash script for making quick bar charts in the terminal.

$ hledger bar someacct
2023-01	+++++
2023-02	++++
2023-03	++++
2023-04	+

$ hledger bar -- -v 1 -f $TIMELOG biz
2023-01	        15 +++++++++++++++
2023-02	        10 ++++++++++
2023-03	        20 ++++++++++++++++++++
2023-04	        12 ++++++++++++

$ hledger bar -- -v 1 -f $TIMELOG biz -p weeklyfrom3weeksago
2023-03-27W13	         8 ++++++++
2023-04-03W14	         2 ++
2023-04-10W15	         4 ++++
2023-04-17W16	         5 +++++

hledger-plot

hledger-plot (2023) is a powerful chart-making tool written in python.

hledger-sankeymatic

At https://sankeymatic.com you can make flow diagrams in your browser, from data records like Source [Amount] Target.

Here's a rough script that exports the outflows from several asset accounts:

LEDGER_FILE=examples/sample.journal
for f in checking saving cash; do 
  hledger areg $f -O tsv | tail +2 | sed -e "s/^/$f\t/"
done | cut -f1,6,7 | gsed -E -e 's/\$//' -e 's/([^\t]*)\t([^\t]*)\t([^\t]*)/\1 [\3] \2/' | grep '\[-' | gsed 's/\[-/[/'

hledger-sankeymatic is a better script to help you export hledger data to SankeyMATIC.

hledger-sankey

• https://github.com/adept/hledger-sankey is a python script using pandas and plotly to plot three sankey graphs of hledger data
• https://github.com/JustSaX/hledger-sankey is hledger-sankey made interactive with Streamlit

hledger-vega

hledger-vega (2022) is a set of scripts for producing custom charts from your hledger reports, using the powerful vega-lite.

r-ledger

r-ledger is an R package for making reports and charts from hledger, Ledger or Beancount.

Grafana export script

Visualise your finances with hledger, InfluxDB, and Grafana (2017)

docker-finance metadata visualising

docker-finance, a hledger-based system, can visualise large quantities of metadata using ROOT.

Other charting tools

Ledger chart tools

Tools built for Ledger can sometimes be adapted to work with hledger also; or, hledger data can be exported to Ledger-readable files. Eg:

• Report Scripts for Ledger CLI with Gnuplot (2016)
• ledger-plots (2018), an R package that makes PDF charts from Ledger
• More can be found at the PTA site: GUI, web, mobile, other

ploterific

ploterific (stack install hvega-theme ploterific) produces simple charts, in a HTML file that uses the Vega-Lite javascript library. Charts can also be saved as SVG or PNG. Here's a detailed example:

hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal -O csv -N expenses -3 cur:USD \
    | sed 's/ USD//' \
    | ploterific -m Bar -f account:N -f balance:Q -c account -o a.html \
    && open a.html

Let's break down that command line:

• -f examples/bcexample.hledger - use this example file in the hledger repo. Omit this to use your default journal.
• bal - run a balance report
• -O csv - show it as CSV on stdout
• -N - disable the final Total row
• expenses - limit to accounts whose name contains expenses
• -3 - summarise accounts to depth 3 and above
• cur:USD - limit to balances in USD currency. If you use the $ symbol, it would be cur:\\$.
• sed 's/ USD//g' - process the output with sed, stripping the USD symbols to leave bare numbers for ploterific. With $ it would be sed 's/\$//g'.
• -m Bar - use Bar as the Vega-Lite mark type
• -f account:N - use the account column as the first feature (X axis), treating values as names
• -f balance:Q - use the balance column as a second feature (Y axis), treating values as quantities
• -c account - use account values to select colours
• -o a.html - save into a temporary HTML file
• && open a.html - and view it in your web browser, on Mac; on other systems it might be xdg-open or start

Here is the same chart but with the colour set by the balance:

hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal -O csv -N expenses -3 cur:USD \
    | sed 's/ USD//' \
    | ploterific -m Bar -f account:N -f balance:Q -c balance:Q -o a.html