For any new plain text accounting project I always recommend using hledger over Ledger.

The main reason is errors and failures are better reported and rendered with hledger, so let’s look at an example - failed balance assertions.

An erroneous assertion

Given a journal file with a single transaction, which contains an error:

2023/08/29 Some person
    Assets:Current         $ 100 = $ 75.73
    Income

The error is that the balance of the Current Account is asserted as $ 75.73 after the transaction, when it’s really $ 100.

Ledger output

Running Ledger, here’s the version:

ledger --version

Ledger 3.1.3-20190331, the command-line accounting tool

Copyright (c) 2003-2019, John Wiegley.  All rights reserved.

This program is made available under the terms of the BSD Public License.
See LICENSE file included with the distribution for details and disclaimer.

Now, let’s ask for a balance - this will check the transaction and complain about the incorrect balance assertion:

ledger -f ledger.dat bal

While parsing file "/tmp/ledger.dat", line 2:
While parsing posting:
  Assets:Current         $ 100 = $ 75.73
                                 ^^^^^^^
Error: Balance assertion off by $ -24.27 (expected to see $ 100)

I’ve always found the “off by” amount confusing and find I don’t know if the asserted balance is too low or high.

hledger’s failed assertion

Just confirming my hledger version:

hledger --version

hledger 1.28, linux-x86_64

Now let’s run the same balance report with hledger:

hledger -f ledger.dat bal

hledger: Error: /tmp/ledger.dat:2:34:
  | 2023-08-29 Some person
2 |     Assets:Current           $ 100 = $ 75.73
  |                                    ^^^^^^^^^
  |     Income                  $ -100

This balance assertion failed.
In account:    Assets:Current
and commodity: $
this balance was asserted:     75.73
but the calculated balance is: 100
a difference of:               -24.27

Consider viewing this account's calculated balances to troubleshoot. Eg:

hledger reg 'Assets:Current$' cur:'\$' -I  # -f FILE

For me, this output is:

• Much more clear. It helpfully shows the failing transaction in the error message.
• Easier to understand: The asserted balance is compared to the computed balance.

Conclusion

Given that plain text accounting is hard enough to work with at the best of times, I would always go for a tool that helps me out the most with the complexity. Right now, that means I’d take hledger over Ledger.