[GNC] Max number of Accounts

[John Ralls]

As Sunfish pointed out earlier, the IDs used for objects in GnuCash are UUIDs [1]. Those are 128-bit unsigned integers that enumerate about 10^38 possible values; the actual numbers are random-generated, not serial. GnuCash will choke for other reasons long before it has used enough of that space that there’s a significant risk of duplication. 

Regards,
John Ralls

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier

> On Dec 5, 2025, at 2:28 PM, R Losey <rlosey at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> It appears from how GnuCash functions that it assigns an internal ID to
> each account and thus, the number of accounts is limited by the number in
> use.  If there is no other restriction on accounts (such as Asset accounts
> are all in the same range), then the internal ID number is likely to be
> limited by what kind of a number is used; a 16-bit number would support
> over 65,000 accounts; a 32-bit number (more likely) would support over 4
> billion accounts... Even 65,000 seems like a lot.
> 
> But a developer would have to tell you this for sure.
> 
> 
> On Fri, Dec 5, 2025 at 11:21 AM Stan Brown (using GC 4.14) <
> stan+gc at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> 
>> On 2025-12-05 09:07, Christopher Treen wrote:
>>> 
>>> But my question is a simple one: Is there a MAXIMUM number of Accounts,
>>> or file size? I currently have 53 parts with one Account per Part Number
>>> to track stock levels. This WILL grow with time.
>>> 
>>> Thanks in advance, Chris
>> 
>> Hi, Chris!  Welcome to GnuCash!
>> 
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