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Automation Integration · head to head

Activiti vs Formance

Activiti logo

Activiti

Automation Integration

Apache 2.0 BPMN engine under Hyland, from which Flowable and Camunda were forked

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Formance logo

Formance

APIs

Open source double-entry ledger and payment orchestration for money-moving software

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Activiti the last stable release was 8.2.0 in January 2024, and while release candidate builds continue, a two-year gap between stable versions is a real risk signal for a production dependency.; Formance formance holds no money and provides no regulatory cover, so it must be paired with a payments provider or bank, and buyers occasionally mistake a ledger for a treasury system and discover the gap late.
  • They diverge on capability: Activiti covers BPMN 2.0 engine, Formance covers Double-entry ledger.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Activiti and Formance actually diverge.

Attributes where Activiti and Formance differ
AttributeActivitiFormance
PlatformsLinux, Windows, Docker, KubernetesLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API
CategoryAutomation IntegrationAPIs

Identical on both: starting price (Free), pricing model (Open source, no licence fee), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Activiti

  • BPMN 2.0 engine
  • Activiti Cloud
  • Modeler
  • Java and REST APIs
  • Pluggable persistence
  • Identity integration

Only in Formance

  • Double-entry ledger
  • Numscript transaction DSL
  • Multi-currency
  • Payments connectivity
  • Reconciliation
  • Self-hosted deployment
  • Cloud offering
  • API and SDKs

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Activiti

  • An Alfresco or Hyland content services deployment where Activiti is already the embedded workflow enginenot Formance
  • A Java application that needs to embed a BPMN engine as a library under a permissive licencenot Formance
  • An organisation that has ruled out Camunda 8 on licence grounds and needs an Apache 2.0 alternativenot Formance
  • Document-centric approval workflows where the process engine sits inside the content management stack rather than beside itnot Formance

Formance

  • A marketplace splitting a single customer payment between seller, platform fee and tax that needs the split to be atomic and auditablenot Activiti
  • A fintech whose homegrown balances table produced numbers finance could not reconcile and now needs proper double-entry before an auditnot Activiti
  • A payments team that wants one normalised model across several PSPs so reconciliation is not written separately for eachnot Activiti
  • A company that wants its ledger under a licence it can keep running even if the vendor disappearsnot Activiti

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Activiti

  • The last stable release was 8.2.0 in January 2024, and while release candidate builds continue, a two-year gap between stable versions is a real risk signal for a production dependency.
  • Both Camunda and Flowable forked away and took large parts of the contributor base with them, so the community, tutorials and third-party tooling around Activiti are much thinner than around either fork.
  • Commercial support is only realistically available by buying Hyland Alfresco subscriptions, so there is no way to pay for Activiti support on its own.
  • Activiti Cloud imposes a distributed architecture of several Spring Boot services plus Keycloak, which is heavy for teams who simply wanted an embeddable engine.
  • Documentation is dated and partly split between old Alfresco sites and Hyland Connect, and the transition between Activiti 6, 7 and 8 architectures makes much of the older material actively misleading.

Formance

  • Formance holds no money and provides no regulatory cover, so it must be paired with a payments provider or bank, and buyers occasionally mistake a ledger for a treasury system and discover the gap late.
  • Numscript is a domain-specific language your team must learn, and while it makes complex splits expressible it also means transaction logic sits outside the languages your engineers already debug well.
  • Self-hosting a ledger that must never lose or duplicate a transaction is a serious operational commitment covering backups, upgrades and Postgres tuning, which is real cost the zero licence fee hides.
  • Enterprise pricing is not published, so the difference between the free path and the supported path cannot be evaluated without a sales conversation.
  • The company is much smaller than the incumbent alternatives, and while the MIT licence protects the code it does not protect the roadmap, so features on the hosted side may arrive slowly or change direction.

Pricing, plan by plan

Activiti

Free
  • ActivitiFree
    • Apache 2.0 licence
    • Embeddable Java library or Activiti Cloud services
    • No usage limits

Formance

Free
  • Open SourceFree
    • MIT licensed core ledger
    • Numscript transaction DSL
    • Multi-currency tracking
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Managed or private deployment
    • Payments connectivity and reconciliation
    • Support with response commitments

Which should you pick?

Choose Activiti if

  • You need bpmn 2.0 engine.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes.
  • You also want activiti cloud.
Activiti review

Choose Formance if

  • You need double-entry ledger.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API.
  • You also want numscript transaction dsl.
Formance review

Questions people ask

Is Activiti or Formance better?
Neither clearly leads. Activiti starts at Free and Formance at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Activiti or Formance?
Activiti starts at Free and Formance at Free.
Does Activiti or Formance run on more platforms?
Activiti runs on Linux, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes. Formance runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API.
Can I use Activiti for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Activiti best used for?
Activiti is most often used for an alfresco or hyland content services deployment where activiti is already the embedded workflow engine, a java application that needs to embed a bpmn engine as a library under a permissive licence, an organisation that has ruled out camunda 8 on licence grounds and needs an apache 2.0 alternative, document-centric approval workflows where the process engine sits inside the content management stack rather than beside it. Of those, an alfresco or hyland content services deployment where activiti is already the embedded workflow engine and a java application that needs to embed a bpmn engine as a library under a permissive licence are not what Formance is typically brought in for.
What can Activiti do that Formance cannot?
Activiti covers BPMN 2.0 engine, Activiti Cloud, Modeler, Java and REST APIs. Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Numscript transaction DSL, Multi-currency, Payments connectivity.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Activiti: Is Activiti still maintained?

Yes, Hyland continues to publish builds, but the last stable release was 8.2.0 in January 2024.

Formance: Is Formance really open source?

Yes. The core ledger is MIT licensed with full source access and no deployment restrictions.

Activiti: What is its relationship to Camunda and Flowable?

Both are forks of Activiti: Camunda in 2013 and Flowable in 2016, when core developers left Alfresco.

Formance: Does Formance move money?

No. It records and orchestrates movements; the actual payments happen at a PSP or bank you connect.

Activiti: What licence is it?

Apache 2.0, which distinguishes it from Camunda 8’s source-available licence.

Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?

Not published. It is an annual subscription quoted per customer.

Activiti: Should I choose Activiti for a new project?

Only if the Apache licence or an existing Alfresco deployment is decisive. Flowable and Camunda have far larger ecosystems.

Formance: Do I have to use Numscript?

Yes for anything beyond the simplest transfers. It is how multi-party transactions are expressed atomically.

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