APIs · head to head
Formance vs Griffin
Formance
APIs
Open source double-entry ledger and payment orchestration for money-moving software
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
Griffin
APIs
UK banking-as-a-service from a company that holds its own full banking licence
- From
- £100/month
- Rated
- -
The short version
- Only Formance has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
- Each has a real cost: 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.; Griffin platform banking carries a one-off onboarding fee from 15,000 pounds and a 3,500 pound monthly minimum, which prices out early-stage companies entirely.
- They diverge on capability: Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Griffin covers Bank accounts by API.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Formance and Griffin actually diverge.
Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated), category (APIs).
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 Formance
- Double-entry ledger
- Numscript transaction DSL
- Multi-currency
- Payments connectivity
- Reconciliation
- Self-hosted deployment
- Cloud offering
- API and SDKs
Only in Griffin
- Bank accounts by API
- UK payment rails
- Integrated ledger
- Automated onboarding
- Debit cards
- Interest on balances
What people use each for
The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.
Formance
- A marketplace splitting a single customer payment between seller, platform fee and tax that needs the split to be atomic and auditablenot Griffin
- A fintech whose homegrown balances table produced numbers finance could not reconcile and now needs proper double-entry before an auditnot Griffin
- A payments team that wants one normalised model across several PSPs so reconciliation is not written separately for eachnot Griffin
- A company that wants its ledger under a licence it can keep running even if the vendor disappearsnot Griffin
Griffin
- A wealth platform that must hold client money in a licensed bank rather than an EMI safeguarding accountnot Formance
- A lender wanting UK accounts and payment rails without becoming a bank itselfnot Formance
- A fintech burned by sponsor bank instability that wants the deposit holder and the API provider to be the same entitynot Formance
- A platform needing sub-account ledgering for pooled client funds with a clean audit trailnot Formance
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
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.
Griffin
- Platform banking carries a one-off onboarding fee from 15,000 pounds and a 3,500 pound monthly minimum, which prices out early-stage companies entirely.
- It is UK-only, so a business with European or US operations needs a second banking provider and a second integration for those entities.
- It is a young bank with a small balance sheet relative to incumbents, and enterprise counterparties still ask hard questions about concentration risk.
- Holding a banking licence means Griffin applies bank-grade due diligence to its own clients, so onboarding is slower and more selective than an EMI-based provider.
- Feature breadth is narrower than long-established providers, particularly in card programme management and in payment types beyond core UK rails.
Pricing, plan by plan
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
Griffin
£100/month- Business Banking$100/month
- From 100 pounds per month
- Interest or commission from around 1.75 percent AER variable
- Operational accounts and UK payment rails
- Platform Banking$3500/month
- One-off onboarding fee from 15,000 pounds
- Minimum monthly spend of 3,500 pounds, drawn down by usage
- Higher committed tiers at 5,000 and 10,000 pounds with discounts
- Enterprise$undefined/month
- Custom pricing
- Bespoke account structures and volumes
- Negotiated interest or commission share
Which should you pick?
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.
Choose Griffin if
- You need bank accounts by api.
- You work on Web, REST API.
- You also want uk payment rails.
Questions people ask
- Is Formance or Griffin better?
- Neither clearly leads. Formance starts at Free and Griffin at £100/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Formance or Griffin?
- Formance has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Formance and £100/month for Griffin.
- Does Formance or Griffin run on more platforms?
- Formance runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API. Griffin runs on Web, REST API.
- Can I use Formance for free?
- Yes. Formance has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Griffin starts at £100/month.
- What is Formance best used for?
- Formance is most often used for a marketplace splitting a single customer payment between seller, platform fee and tax that needs the split to be atomic and auditable, a fintech whose homegrown balances table produced numbers finance could not reconcile and now needs proper double-entry before an audit, a payments team that wants one normalised model across several psps so reconciliation is not written separately for each, a company that wants its ledger under a licence it can keep running even if the vendor disappears. Of those, a marketplace splitting a single customer payment between seller, platform fee and tax that needs the split to be atomic and auditable and a fintech whose homegrown balances table produced numbers finance could not reconcile and now needs proper double-entry before an audit are not what Griffin is typically brought in for.
- What can Formance do that Griffin cannot?
- Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Numscript transaction DSL, Multi-currency, Payments connectivity. Griffin covers Bank accounts by API, UK payment rails, Integrated ledger, Automated onboarding.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
Formance: Is Formance really open source?
Yes. The core ledger is MIT licensed with full source access and no deployment restrictions.
Griffin: Is Griffin actually a bank?
Yes. It received a UK banking licence with restrictions in March 2023 and a full licence in March 2024 after exiting mobilisation.
Formance: Does Formance move money?
No. It records and orchestrates movements; the actual payments happen at a PSP or bank you connect.
Griffin: What does it cost?
Business banking from 100 pounds a month; platform banking from a 15,000 pound onboarding fee plus a 3,500 pound monthly minimum drawn down by usage.
Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?
Not published. It is an annual subscription quoted per customer.
Griffin: Does it cover Europe?
No. Griffin is a UK bank serving UK accounts and UK payment rails.
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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