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Hedger vs Portfolio Performance

Privacy + free + open-source desktop vs. convenience + automation web app. Both serious tools, different priorities.

Written with AI assistance

Portfolio Performance (PP) is a free, open-source Java desktop application for tracking investments. It's been around since 2012, has a loyal community, and is a popular choice among privacy-conscious European investors. Runs entirely on your local machine — no data ever leaves your computer.

Hedger is a web application — your data is stored on our server. Automatic price updates, access from any device, no software installation, but you're trusting a third party with your financial data. Different tradeoffs.

What Portfolio Performance does well

  • Complete privacy. Data never leaves your computer. No server, no account, no cloud. Hard to beat for investors who don't want anyone else seeing their portfolio.
  • Free and open-source. Truly free, no premium tier. Code on GitHub, auditable. Funded by donations.
  • Mature, battle-tested. 13+ years of development, active community, extensive documentation in German and English. Stress-tested on thousands of real portfolios.
  • Flexible imports. CSV from many brokers, community-contributed templates for dozens of sources, PDF import for some German bank statements.
  • Solid charting. Performance charts, allocation pie charts, TTWROR / IRR. Good for visual analysis.
  • Custom taxonomy. Flexible tagging by sector, region, asset class, or any dimension you define.

What Hedger focuses on differently

  • Automatic broker parsing. Upload CSV/XLSX from IBKR, Degiro, T212, Fio, XTB and Hedger parses every event. PP requires manual column mapping or community templates per broker.
  • Automatic price + FX updates. Hedger fetches market prices and CNB FX rates daily without intervention. PP needs manual price imports or configured price sources (which can break when providers change APIs).
  • Period attribution. For any position and any period, Hedger breaks returns into Price / FX / Income / Fees / Deposits / Taxes. PP has portfolio-level TTWROR/IRR but not per-position decomposition.
  • Source-file audit trail. Every Hedger number drills to the broker CSV row it came from. PP tracks transactions but doesn't link back to the import file row.
  • Czech tax report. FIFO lots, 3-year time test, CNB FX rates, WHT tracking, mojedane.cz XML export. PP has no Czech-specific tax support.
  • Market intelligence. Earnings, news, macro events filtered to your holdings. Weekly digest in-app and by email. PP doesn't include news or events.
  • Access from anywhere. Web-based — check from any device without syncing files. PP data lives on one computer (you can sync via Dropbox, but manually).

In short

Pick Portfolio Performance if privacy is your top priority and you don't want financial data on anyone else's server. Also if you prefer open-source software, want maximum control, or like a desktop app. Mature tool with active community.

Pick Hedger if you want automatic broker parsing without manual column mapping, automatic daily price/FX without configuration, deep per-position attribution, Czech tax reporting, or market intelligence scoped to your holdings — and you're OK with web-based.

Use both: some investors keep PP as a private local archive and use Hedger for daily tracking and tax. Both accept CSV, so the manual-effort overlap is small.

Try Hedger

Hedger is in open beta. The fastest way to see if it fits is to load the demo portfolio — no signup needed.

Open demo Start with your own data