Is Adyen or Formance better?

Neither clearly leads. Adyen starts at $0.13/per-transaction and Formance at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Adyen or Formance?

Formance has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $0.13/per-transaction for Adyen and Free for Formance.

Does Adyen or Formance run on more platforms?

Adyen runs on Web, Api, Pos. Formance runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API.

Can I use Formance for free?

Yes. Formance has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Adyen starts at $0.13/per-transaction.

What is Adyen best used for?

Adyen is most often used for card acquiring with interchange plus pricing for larger merchants, accepting local payment methods across multiple countries, settling in several currencies through linked bank accounts, unified online and in-person payments. Of those, card acquiring with interchange plus pricing for larger merchants and accepting local payment methods across multiple countries are not what Formance is typically brought in for.

What can Adyen do that Formance cannot?

Adyen covers Payment processing, Risk management, Unified commerce, Issuing. Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Numscript transaction DSL, Multi-currency, Payments connectivity.

Accounting · head to head

Adyen vs Formance

Adyen

Accounting

The payments platform built for growth

From: $0.13/per-transaction
Rated: -

Full review Website

Formance

APIs

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

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Only Formance has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
Each has a real cost: Adyen there is a minimum monthly invoice, set by industry and business model and only disclosed through the sales team, so small volumes are not economic; 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: Adyen covers Payment processing, Formance covers Double-entry ledger.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Adyen and Formance actually diverge.

Attributes where Adyen and Formance differ
Attribute	Adyen	Formance
Starting price	$0.13/per-transaction	Free
Pricing model	usage-based	Open source, no licence fee
Free tier	No	Yes
Platforms	Web, Api, Pos	Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API
Category	Accounting	APIs
Founded	2006	Unknown

Identical on both: 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 Adyen

Payment processing
Risk management
Unified commerce
Issuing
Platform payments
SAP
Salesforce
Oracle

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.

Adyen

Card acquiring with interchange plus pricing for larger merchantsnot Formance
Accepting local payment methods across multiple countriesnot Formance
Settling in several currencies through linked bank accountsnot Formance
Unified online and in-person paymentsnot Formance

Formance

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

Where each one falls short

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

Adyen

There is a minimum monthly invoice, set by industry and business model and only disclosed through the sales team, so small volumes are not economic
Published fees are indicative rather than a rate card, with real pricing negotiated
Interchange++ means the card cost varies per transaction rather than being a single predictable percentage
Alternative payment methods carry their own rates on top, such as 3.3 percent plus $0.10 for American Express in North America

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

Adyen

$0.13/per-transaction

Transaction-Based Pricing$undefined/mo
- Fixed $0.13 USD per transaction
- Variable fee determined by payment method
- No setup fees

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 Adyen if

You need payment processing.
You work on Web, Api, Pos.
You also want risk management.

Adyen 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 Adyen or Formance better?: Neither clearly leads. Adyen starts at $0.13/per-transaction and Formance at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Adyen or Formance?: Formance has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $0.13/per-transaction for Adyen and Free for Formance.
Does Adyen or Formance run on more platforms?: Adyen runs on Web, Api, Pos. Formance runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API.
Can I use Formance for free?: Yes. Formance has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Adyen starts at $0.13/per-transaction.
What is Adyen best used for?: Adyen is most often used for card acquiring with interchange plus pricing for larger merchants, accepting local payment methods across multiple countries, settling in several currencies through linked bank accounts, unified online and in-person payments. Of those, card acquiring with interchange plus pricing for larger merchants and accepting local payment methods across multiple countries are not what Formance is typically brought in for.
What can Adyen do that Formance cannot?: Adyen covers Payment processing, Risk management, Unified commerce, Issuing. Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Numscript transaction DSL, Multi-currency, Payments connectivity.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Adyen: How much does Adyen charge per transaction?

Adyen charges a fixed $0.13 USD per transaction plus a variable fee based on the payment method used. Credit cards typically cost $0.13 + 0.60% + interchange, while digital wallets and BNPL options cost between $0.13 + 0.99% to $0.13 + 4.99%+, depending on the specific method and region.

Source

Formance: Is Formance really open source?

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

Adyen: Does Adyen have monthly subscription or setup fees?

No, Adyen has no setup fees or monthly recurring charges. You pay only for each transaction processed. The transaction fee structure remains the same regardless of transaction volume or business size.

Source

Formance: Does Formance move money?

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

Adyen: What's Adyen's Interchange++ pricing option?

Adyen offers an Interchange++ transparent pricing model that passes interchange and scheme fees directly to merchants instead of bundling them into a percentage rate. This allows visibility into exact costs for each payment method.

Source

Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?

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

Adyen: Can I process payments in multiple currencies with Adyen?

Yes, Adyen supports 100+ payment methods across multiple currencies. You can link multiple bank accounts in different currencies to avoid currency conversion fees on international transactions.

Source

Formance: Do I have to use Numscript?

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

Adyen vs Formance

Adyen

Formance

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Adyen

Only in Formance

What people use each for

Adyen

Formance

Where each one falls short

Adyen

Formance

Pricing, plan by plan

Adyen

Formance

Which should you pick?

Choose Adyen if

Choose Formance if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Adyen

More on Formance

Keep looking

Other head to heads