Bitcoin accounting software should connect to your wallets, track cost basis, and produce real books. Most of what's sold under that name does much less. Here's what we do differently, and why: Clams is local-first. Consumer tax tools and enterprise subledgers alike put your wallet history, balances, and addresses on their servers. Clams runs on a machine you control: a single binary, self-hosted or local. Your ledger, transactions, and balances never leave it. Clams is unmetered. Most tools charge by transaction count or wallet connection, which punishes the people who use Bitcoin most. A single Lightning node may forwards thousands of payments a month. Clams is a flat price, no matter how many wallets or how much volume. Clams is Bitcoin-focused, not "crypto." Generic tools treat Bitcoin as one coin among 20,000+, so xpubs, descriptors, multisig, and Lightning end up as afterthoughts or missing entirely. Bitcoin is our whole focus, not some feature you enable. Clams is for people who use Bitcoin as money. And the businesses getting paid in, holding or spending BTC. If you trade across dozens of chains and just need one tax number a year, a generic tool will serve you better. We built for one asset, on purpose. Full comparison of pricing, Lightning support, cost basis, and data custody across the 10 tools people actually use in 2026 -

Clams

The 10 Best Bitcoin Accounting Software Tools in 2026

Compare the 10 best Bitcoin accounting software tools in 2026 on xpub sync, Lightning support, per-wallet cost basis, privacy, and pricing.

Clams v1 is out of beta. After two years of talking to bitcoiners, founders, and accountants, we kept hearing the same three problems: You move Bitcoin between your own wallets and your tool books it as a sale. You overpay tax on coins you never sold. Clams matches transfers, on-chain and Lightning, and carries the cost basis across. Your xpubs and full transaction history sit on someone else's server, one breach from exposure. Clams is local-first: run it on your laptop or self-host it on your own servers. We never see your data. Your wallet balance matches but your books don't. Without double-entry, there's nothing to audit. Clams gives you real double-entry books with an audit trail behind every number. We built Clams to fix all three, and a lot more. Clams is paid software now: priced per person and per set of books, nothing else. No metering by wallet or transaction, no auto-renew, and reading your books stays free forever, even if you stop paying. Pay in Bitcoin over Lightning, or by card. If you ran the v1 beta, it's free for you through the end of the year. Some of you offered to pay before we asked. We won't forget it. Get started: clams.tech/downloads

Clams now syncs directly from phoenixd 🚀

Clams now supports the Liquid Network 🚀 L-BTC and Liquid assets now track alongside your on-chain and Lightning activity. One ledger, full cost basis, clean reports. Move your BTC in or out of Liquid and Clams auto-categorizes it as a transfer. No phantom gains, no manual cleanup.

Clams v1.0.0-beta.13 is out TL;DR: - First-class USDT and USDC accounting - Custom CSV transfer links for custodial movements - Capital gains holding period terms - Per-connection breakdown in the capital gains report - Another round of Lightning on-chain accounting correctness fixes. Full notes -

Clams

Stablecoin Accounting & Holding Period Terms | v1.0.0-beta.13

Clams v1.0.0-beta.13: first-class USDT and USDC accounting, Custom CSV transfer links, capital gains holding period terms, and Lightning proof diag...

Clams now matches custodial wallet transfers automatically. And lets you manually link the ones it can't infer. We also improved our Lightning channel close accounting. Full release notes for v1.0.0-beta.12 -

Clams

Manual Transfer Links & Custodial Matching | v1.0.0-beta.12

Clams v1.0.0-beta.12: manual transfer links when automatic inference is unsafe, automatic custodial-to-custodial matching, a CSV mapping inspector,...

As always, to update just run: clams update

If you need a solid private AI stack for your Bitcoin books consider: Venice AI for natural-language inference. No prompt logging, no training on your data. Clams for the local accounting engine. Opencode as the agent shell. New guide -

Clams

Venice AI Bitcoin Accounting | Opencode Desktop & Clams Setup

Set up Venice AI with Opencode Desktop and Clams for private Bitcoin accounting. Generate an API key, connect a model, load the skill.

Need a guide for a different stack? Let us know.

We put together a comprehensive list of all Clams features on our site as we had some feedback. Some highlights: 1. Reconciles Lightning channels with on-chain activity 2. Auto-matches self-transfers, no double-counting 3. No caps on wallets, transactions, or reports 4. Drivable by scripts and agents via CLI 5. Runs fully local after sync View the full list here -

Clams

Features | Clams

Everything Clams supports. On-chain, Lightning, Liquid, accounting, enterprise, and integrations. The comprehensive feature reference.

If you need to find your cost basis for the 1099-DA form, Clams will do this for you. Fully private, data never leaves your machine. No sharing addresses or xpub’s with anyone. No limits on wallets or transactions. We have guides on our YouTube channel and blog. And we are happy to help if you are stuck.

Clams v1.0.0-beta.10 is out. Historical balance sheets are now available. The report takes an as-of flag, so you can pick any point in the past and get the books as they stood that day. Useful for audits, year-end, board reports, and due diligence. Lightning sync reliability got better across the board. Core Lightning works more cleanly over Tor-backed Commando. Long syncs are much more stable. LND pending-invoice handling is more reliable for nodes carrying many open invoices. On-chain wallets are faster too, with quicker incremental syncs after the first scan and recovery from older checkpoint formats. Testnet4 is now supported across Address, Descriptor, and XPub connections. A new flag lets you force a full sync and rebuild from scratch when you need to. Run clams update. Full notes:

Clams

Historical Balance Sheets & Reliable Lightning Syncs | v1.0.0-beta.10

Historical balance sheets via --as-of, more reliable Core Lightning and LND syncs, testnet4 support, faster on-chain incrementals, and journal fixes.

With 2 Lightning nodes connected, Clams shows a modest capital gain. I connect the xpub for an on-chain wallet and the River exchange data - It's now a capital loss. At the start of the demo, sats moving between our wallets appear to be spends and receives. Without the full picture, there's no way to know they're transfers. Adding the on-chain wallet and the River CSV lets Clams track the bitcoin end to end: River Exchange → on-chain wallet → lightning nodes. Disposals get recategorized as transfers. In other words, they are no longer taxable events. The average cost basis went up too. River has the actual purchase prices, not inferred ones from on-chain timestamps. Higher cost basis + transfers reclassified = realized gains flip from positive to negative. "But I don't want to hand over my xpub to get a more accurate cost basis." You don't. Your data never leaves your machine. You can connect your own Electrum, Esplora or Bitcoin RPC server for on-chain lookups. More connections in Clams doesn't mean more trust. It means fewer false taxable events and an accurate cost basis.

Our YouTube channel has a new Getting Started playlist to walk you from installation to advanced workflows. More videos coming. If there's a specific workflow you want covered, let us know. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkPrqEMuJt52fyIqotBkCHnLeeLHit35s

Super cool to see @npub1cvql...yjt3 ship a CLI for agent wallets. We paired it with Clams. The agent spends bitcoin within policy limits, exports the wallet descriptor, feeds it to Clams, and pulls a balance sheet.

Accounting for every millisat on a Lightning node is hard. Multiple nodes with different implementations and tens of thousands of transactions? Even harder. Hook your Core Lightning & LND nodes up to Clams, pair with your favorite agent, and simply talk to your books.

Install Clams and onboard in 2 minutes with Claude Desktop One command to install Clams + Agent Skills. Open Claude to sign in. Then set your currency, cost basis method, and onchain source. Done.

Private AI meets Bitcoin accounting. @Maple + opencode Clams CLI. Ask questions about your books without exposing your data. Maple AI encrypts your data before it leaves your device and processes it in secure hardware that even they can't see into. No training on your data, no third-party sharing. Opencode connects to Maple and talks to Clams CLI. Your books stay private. We tried all the models on Maple and Kimi K2.5 was our favorite. It is fast and makes few errors, especially when paired with the Clams agent skills -

GitHub

GitHub - clams-tech/skills: Agent Skills for Clams CLI

Agent Skills for Clams CLI. Contribute to clams-tech/skills development by creating an account on GitHub.

We'll put a setup guide together for anyone interested. In the meantime, you can download Maple and opencode using these links:

Maple AI

Maple Research | Private AI Workspace

Open Maple Research to sign up or log in to your private AI workspace.

OpenCode | The open source AI coding agent

OpenCode - The open source coding agent.

Complex bitcoin accounting workflows are easier when your agent knows Clams. What you're watching is Claude Code using Clams CLI. The agent finds transactions nested among onchain and Lightning node journal entries. It connects wallets, imports CSVs, and generates branded reports. All from natural language prompts. We've been building agent skills to improve how AI agents work with Clams. Every command, every workflow, every edge case. learn more:

GitHub

GitHub - clams-tech/skills: Agent Skills for Clams CLI

Agent Skills for Clams CLI. Contribute to clams-tech/skills development by creating an account on GitHub.

Clams v1.0.0-beta.8 is out. @River is now a first-class connection. Import your Account Activity CSV directly. New: manual cost basis overrides. Sometimes your imported data doesn't reflect the real cost basis. Incomplete purchase records, missing wallets. Now you can set it directly and see it reflected in your capital gains reports. Our Custom connection feature has been improved to make it more flexible. Better support for exchanges with unusual CSV layouts. More edge cases covered, fewer workarounds. More details in the release notes. Also in this release: better CLI error messages, offline auth validation, smarter on-chain transfer matching for custodial imports, and unique workspace label enforcement. Full release notes:

Clams

River CSV Import & Cost Basis Overrides | v1.0.0-beta.8

River exchange CSV imports, manual cost basis overrides, improved CSV mapping DSL, and better error reporting.

Cheers, Clams Team

Wallet to report in under a minute. Here's a quick look at the Clams CLI. Connect a wallet, sync transactions, generate journal entries, and print reports. All from your terminal.

Lightning volume crossed an estimated $1B/month in 2025 (see latest @River report). More exchanges and mining pools are running nodes. We put together some thoughts on why Lightning accounting is its own discipline.

Clams

Lightning Node Accounting Guide: Routing Fees & Taxes (2026)

Track Lightning node income, channel events, and routing fees for accurate tax reporting. A complete Bitcoin accounting guide for node operators.