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APIs · head to head

Formance vs Increase

Formance logo

Formance

APIs

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Increase logo

Increase

APIs

Direct banking API for ACH, wires, real-time payments, accounts and cards

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

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.; Increase the published per transaction rates exclude a monthly platform fee that Increase states varies by use case, so the transparent price page cannot produce a total cost and the material part of the deal is still negotiated privately.
  • They diverge on capability: Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Increase covers ACH origination and receipt.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Formance and Increase actually diverge.

Attributes where Formance and Increase differ
AttributeFormanceIncrease
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feequote
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, APIAPI, Web

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 Increase

  • ACH origination and receipt
  • Domestic wires
  • Real-time payments
  • Bank accounts
  • Cards
  • Cheques
  • Sandbox and simulations
  • Audit and reconciliation data

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 Increase
  • A fintech whose homegrown balances table produced numbers finance could not reconcile and now needs proper double-entry before an auditnot Increase
  • A payments team that wants one normalised model across several PSPs so reconciliation is not written separately for eachnot Increase
  • A company that wants its ledger under a licence it can keep running even if the vendor disappearsnot Increase

Increase

  • A payroll or treasury product that needs to originate same-day ACH and wires under its own control rather than through a payment processornot Formance
  • A marketplace that must hold seller balances in ledgered accounts with real account and routing numbersnot Formance
  • A fintech that wants FedNow and RTP payouts so recipients are paid outside banking hoursnot Formance
  • An engineering team that needs the underlying return codes and settlement timing visible in order to build correct reconciliation and retry logicnot 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.

Increase

  • The published per transaction rates exclude a monthly platform fee that Increase states varies by use case, so the transparent price page cannot produce a total cost and the material part of the deal is still negotiated privately.
  • Free allowances are deliberately small at ten account numbers and five physical cards, so any programme issuing accounts or cards at volume moves to quoted pricing almost immediately.
  • Banking is provided through partner banks, so programme approval, compliance obligations and the ability to launch at all depend on a bank relationship you do not control, and post-Synapse bank risk appetite has tightened considerably.
  • The API deliberately exposes payment rail mechanics rather than smoothing them, which is correct engineering but means a team without payments expertise will build reconciliation and return handling wrongly and only discover it when funds go astray.
  • Coverage is United States only, so a company with international payout needs runs a second provider and reconciles two ledgers, and the single API argument disappears at the first cross border customer.

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

Increase

On request
  • Increase Platform$undefined/month
    • Monthly fee quoted by use case and not published
    • Next-day ACH origination listed at 0.50 US dollars per transaction
    • Same-day ACH origination listed at 2.00 per transaction

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.
Formance review

Choose Increase if

  • You need ach origination and receipt.
  • You work on API, Web.
  • You also want domestic wires.
Increase review

Questions people ask

Is Formance or Increase better?
Neither clearly leads. Formance starts at Free and Increase at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Formance or Increase?
Formance has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Formance and On request for Increase.
Does Formance or Increase run on more platforms?
Formance runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API. Increase runs on API, Web.
Can I use Formance for free?
Yes. Formance has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Increase starts at On request.
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 Increase is typically brought in for.
What can Formance do that Increase cannot?
Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Numscript transaction DSL, Multi-currency, Payments connectivity. Increase covers ACH origination and receipt, Domestic wires, Real-time payments, Bank accounts.

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.

Increase: Does Increase publish its pricing?

Partly. Per transaction fees for ACH, wires, RTP, FedNow and cards are listed publicly. The monthly platform fee is not, and it is described only as varying by use case.

Formance: Does Formance move money?

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

Increase: Who holds the deposits?

Partner banks, not Increase itself. That relationship determines your programme approval, your compliance obligations and your risk if the bank changes appetite.

Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?

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

Increase: Is it international?

No. Increase covers United States rails only, so cross border payouts require a second provider.

Formance: Do I have to use Numscript?

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

Increase: How is it different from a middleware BaaS platform?

It exposes the rails rather than abstracting them, showing real return codes and settlement timing. That suits teams who understand payments and punishes teams who do not.

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