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BeanPool is a free app your community uses to trade help, goods and skills with each other. Instead of money, you use Beans: help someone and Beans come to you; get help and they go the other way. Zero is the goal — give about as much as you take.
No lookalike tracking, data harvesting, or get-rich guru algorithms.
Beans are mutual credit for real trade — never pumped on exchanges.
No dopamine-loop doomscrolling — only real local offerings and neighbors.
No interest, no banks, no middlemen. The only fees are small and go to your community's own Commons pool, never to us.
No blockchain, no coins, no wallet to buy into. Your 12 words simply unlock your own account.
No invite needed: join the global community in your browser or in the app, look around, post something free or for swap, and find a community near you.
See the communities already running, ask one near you to let you in, or start one on a spare computer or a small rented server.
Install the app and open the link or scan the QR code a member gave you; an invite works once and lasts 30 days.
Beans live in local communities, each on its own server. The global community shows you around and leads you to one. It shows you how Beans work there, with an example community.
No app store? Use BeanPool in your phone's browser, or download the Android APK from beanpool.org/android.
Sam goes up to +30. Ana goes down to −30.
Ana is back to 0. Lee is now at −30.
Everyone is back near zero, and three jobs got done without anyone spending money.
The seller keeps 98.5% of each price; the other 1.5% goes to the community's Commons pool, so the real numbers land a little under these.
A community runs BeanPool on its own small server. Members post what they can offer and what they need, and trade in Beans. A Bean is not money you buy: it is a record that someone helped someone. Everyone starts at zero. When you help, your balance goes up; when you are helped, it goes down; across the community the balances always add up to zero. Nobody issues Beans, nobody lends them at interest, and nobody cashes them out. A small fee on each trade goes to the community's own pool, which its members spend by vote. The app is free and open source; a community picks its own server, and the data on it is theirs.
Mutual credit is old: LETS groups ran it on paper for decades, and in Switzerland a circle of businesses, WIR, has traded in its own credit since 1934. Paperwork is what wore most of them out. BeanPool is the paperwork, done by the app.
From the first screen to your first trade.
Try the global community with no invite, ask a community near you to let you in, or open the invite a member sent you. Either way you pick the name people will know you by.
The app makes your account on your phone and shows you 12 words. Write them down and keep them safe: they bring your account back if you lose or change your phone.
Put up something you can do or share: a lift to town, eggs, fixing a bike, an hour of gardening. In a community with Beans, you need at least one offer up before you can post a need or buy. On the global community, which has no Beans, your first post can be a need.
Agree a price in Beans. The Beans are held safely until the job is done, then they go to the seller. You rate each other afterwards.
The app opens on Home, a set of cards you choose. Behind it: the Market, the Map, Chat, People, the Pulse, the Commons and the Ledger, where you see your balance and your trades.
The app opens on Home: a few cards you choose, such as what needs you, what's new in the Market, events coming up, polls and Decisions to vote on, and the last lines of a chat you pick. Add or remove cards, and hold one to drag it where you want it.
What people in your community are offering and what they need, each with a photo, newest first. Events and polls are in the same feed: tap Events or Polls to see only those, and vote on a short poll right on its tile. Search it, filter by category, and tap to trade.
See offers, needs and events near you. You place every pin yourself, from where you are at that moment or by dropping it by hand; the app never uses your location in the background. An event's pin can be set to Approximate, about 100 m. Pins are seen by your community's members. On the global community, visitors see roughly where things are, with no names, no profile pictures and no exact spots.
Post a working bee, a repair café or a skill-share with a time and a place. People tap Going or Interested. People going get the event chat and the host's private note — the gate code, what to bring — and hear about it if the time or place changes or it is cancelled. Where anyone can join, as on the global community, the host lets each person in first, by default. Events are free; no Beans change hands. Find them in the Market under Events (Today, This weekend, Next 7 days) and on the Map. Going or Interested gets you a reminder, and Add to calendar puts it in your own calendar. Copy to a new date runs one again.
Message anyone in your community. Direct messages and group chats are end-to-end encrypted: your community's node carries them but cannot read them. On a node that hasn't been updated yet, a group chat can still be read by the people who run it, and the chat says so. Enterprise discussions and event chats can be read by the people who run your community's node, so they can be moderated.
An enterprise is something your community runs together: an egg flock, a tool library, a firewood depot, or a project with a goal and an end date. Keepers run it and a lead keeper leads it; members can ask to join as keepers. It has its own Beans, posts offers and needs in the Market like anyone else, shows its income and spending, and can pause for the season. No keeper can approve a payment to themselves: another keeper has to.
Anyone can ask the community a question with a poll, one a week; vote right on its tile in the Market, or open it from Home. Bigger choices are Decisions, in the Commons tab: a grant from the Commons pool to an enterprise, a hardship grant, replacing a lead keeper. A Decision is open for 7 days and carries itself out if it passes. Once you have completed a trade, you can propose one.
Start a group for your street, your garden club or your band, and you become its convenor. Post to the group only, and choose whether it is open, people ask to join, or it is invite only.
See what local people are making. Members can connect their own channels — TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, SoundCloud or a blog feed — and their public posts show up in your community's Pulse. Connecting is up to each member. Anything that shouldn't be there can be reported, and your community's node can take it down.
Nobody buys Beans, and nobody pays interest.
A new account has 0 Beans. When you sell, your balance goes up; when you buy, it goes down. Across the whole community the balances always add up to zero.
Once you have completed a trade, you can start to go below zero to get help before you have given it back. Your credit line starts small (a 100-Bean trade earns about 37 Beans of it) and grows as you trade with more people. The offers you keep up set how much of it you can use: one offer up to 200 Beans, five offers up to 2000. A voucher can also give you a starting line, and where your community allows it, you can pass on part of a line someone gave you.
Over time you earn badges: Newcomer, Resident, Steward, Elder. They show your history in the community. They don't unlock anything. An admin can also give someone a badge, and with it that badge's starting credit line.
A 1.5% fee on completed trades, and a small monthly fee on the part of a balance above 200 Beans, go to your community's Commons pool — not to us or anyone else. Your community decides what the pool pays for, through Decisions.
In a community that votes, its owners and admins can suspend a member at once, with a reason members can read. That opens a 7-day vote on removing them, and only that vote removes them: an admin can't remove anyone outright. Where too few members can vote, an owner decides. For now, an owner can also remove a member together with everyone they invited, and everyone those people invited. On the global community there are no votes: BeanPool's moderators suspend for 7 days or remove.
No community vote can remove an owner or admin of a community's server: only an owner can. A community's only owner can't be removed. An admin can suspend another admin; the suspension ends when its vote closes, and they keep their role. Only an owner can take an admin's role away.
Only active members who joined before a community Decision opened, and whose credit is not frozen, can vote on it; an enterprise's account can't. On votes to spend the shared Commons pool, they also need to have traded, and how much they have traded sets how many votes they can cast. Proposing a community Decision takes a completed trade too, except for admins.
When a member is removed while owing Beans, the shared Commons pool pays their debt, so the accounts still balance. The Commons pool may go below zero to do this, so the community shares the loss as a write-off.
On the phone app your key is held in the phone's secure storage, and you can add App Lock, which asks for your phone's own screen lock. In the web app it is held in that browser's own storage. Your 12 words are the backup that depends on nobody.
You can report a post, a member, an event or a Pulse item, and block anyone. Reports go to the people who run your community's node — its owner and admins — who can remove content and suspend members. In a community that votes, members can propose a Decision to suspend someone, and when an admin suspends a member, the community votes on removing them.
What is stored, who can see it, and how to delete your account.
You can also link a Google, Apple or Facebook sign-in as a second way back. A locked copy of your key is then kept for that sign-in. The copy goes where your community chose: BeanPool's key vault, a small server in Iceland that does nothing else (where every community starts), or your community's own server. A community can also keep no copies; then your 12 words are your way back. The web app on the global community keeps it on that community's server, which we run. Whoever keeps the copy can open it: BeanPool for the vault and the global community, the people who run your node for a copy kept there. A restore from the vault waits a day unless one of your own devices says it's you. That copy, and copying your account to another device of yours, are the only ways your key leaves your device.
The communities running BeanPool that have listed themselves in the directory.
Every community runs on its own node: a small server that holds that community's members, posts and ledger. Someone local runs it. If your town or valley doesn't have one yet, it could be you.
Stay in the LoopGet an email when there is a new release or a new community.