GnuCash and ledger/hledger
Answering my own question, I figured it out: yes, there is a way, with a tool called gnucash2ledger.py. Versions used: GnuCash 2.6.1, Ledger 2.6.2, hledger 0.22
I use GnuCash which I really like.  However, I've never used any other personal finance software so I can't really compare.  Before GnuCash, I used an Excel spreadsheet which works fine for very basic finances. Pros Cons "It comes down to the resolution you want to have on your personal finances.  A package like GNUCash allows you to easily answer questions like ""Exactly how much do I spend on interest per month/year/decade.""  Same with pretty much any other expense, liability or asset you have whether it be taxes, utilities, your home equity or your net worth.  The other tools you mention are nice, and certainly convenient, but they tend to lump things together in broad strokes and omit many categories altogether (taxes).  Ultimately by having such a fine grained accounting tool, you can target small or large things to better budget your money.   Another thing a package like GNUCash provides is a single, private place to consolidate all of your finances.  This is nice for things like net worth and asset accounts that you might not want to give a company access to. Finally, GNUcash in particular helps normal people think like accountants.  Rather than lump everything into 'income' and 'expenses', once you start using GNUCash you'll start thinking in terms of equity, liabilities, net-worth and assets in addition to income and expenses.  This gives me a much more accurate view of my finances and helps me better target areas for improvement.  In short, it helps me to see the broader picture which helps me to keep my eye on the prize - which of course is to not have to worry about money at all." I haven't used it in years, but look at GnuCash. From the site, one bullet point under Feature Highlights: The thing is that you only need one entry, not two. That's the beauty of double entry - since you have double entry system, every transaction will create two entries. So you don't need to create two transactions, you only need one. So you got a $30 gift. You credit Income:Gifts and on the other side Assets:Checking. Your general ledger entry (Menu->Tools->General Ledger) will look like this: You end up with balances: Which represent your total income and your current balance. Similarly with expense for food: GL will look like this: Balances: And you keep track of totals properly. This was such a wonderful and clear explanation. It has helped me to understand (at 28) a concept that I have always been a bit murky on. I would feel safe making the bet that you are a teacher of some sort. I would find it extremely interesting to hear you thoughts on why we don't use the gold standard anymore. Do you work in finance? Plaid is exactly what you are looking for! It's docs are easy to understand, and you can sign up to their API and use their free tier to get started. An example request to connect a user to Plaid and retrieve their transactions data (in JSON): "I use the (gratis, libre) command-line program ledger for my personal accounts.  It handles funds across accounts gracefully, through a feature called ""Virtual Accounts"".  A transaction can add or subtract money from a virtual account, which need not balance with all the other entries in the transaction.  Then it's just a matter of setting up reports to include or exclude these accounts." "The Yahoo Finance API is no longer available, so Finance::Quote needs to point at something else.  Recent versions of Finance::Quote can use AlphaVantage as a replacement for the Yahoo Finance API, but individual users need to acquire and input an AlphaVantage API key. Pretty decent documentation for how to this is available at the GnuCash wiki. Once you've followed the directions on the wiki and set the API key, you still need to tell each individual security to use AlphaVantage rather than Yahoo Finance: As a warning, I've been having intermittent trouble with AlphaVantage.  From the GnuCash wiki:  Be patient. Alphavantage does not have the resources that Yahoo! did and it is common for quote requests to time out, which GnuCash will present as ""unknown error"". I've certainly been experiencing those errors, though not always."