there are three stages in the evolution of equivalence methods. It is the last stage which corresponds to the emergence of autonomous methods, to which this article is devoted. We offer a story from their appearance in France in the 1950s to the present day. The emergence of autonomous methods, such as the GP method, was a response to criticisms of the Homogenic Sections method and standard costs. From 1960, when direct costing became necessary in France, we note that the simplifications it proposed lead to a deletion of the equivalence methods. Subsequently, the emergence of the ABC method in France constituted a deadweight for the GP method, which would then return to a second young person under the name of the UVA method. In recent years, adaptations to the ABC method have been proposed, among them the TD ABC, the article of which shows that it is an autonomous method of equivalence. It seems to us that the significance of these developments is that they correspond to the tensions in the management accounts between accuracy and relevance.