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APIs · head to head

Formance vs Jaeger

Formance logo

Formance

APIs

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Jaeger logo

Jaeger

Cloud

Open-source end-to-end distributed tracing

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • 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.; Jaeger tracing is only as good as the instrumentation, and partial instrumentation produces misleading gaps
  • They diverge on capability: Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Jaeger covers Distributed trace search.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Formance and Jaeger actually diverge.

Attributes where Formance and Jaeger differ
AttributeFormanceJaeger
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, APILinux, Kubernetes, Docker
CategoryAPIsCloud

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 Formance

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

Only in Jaeger

  • Distributed trace search
  • Dependency graph
  • Adaptive sampling
  • Pluggable storage

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

Jaeger

  • Finding which service in a request path causes the latencynot Formance
  • Understanding real service dependencies rather than the diagram on the wikinot Formance
  • Debugging failures that only appear under production traffic patternsnot 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.

Jaeger

  • Tracing is only as good as the instrumentation, and partial instrumentation produces misleading gaps
  • Storage is the real operational cost: high-volume tracing on Elasticsearch or Cassandra is a cluster to run and pay for
  • Traces alone, without correlated metrics and logs, leave you switching between tools during an incident

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

Jaeger

Free
  • JaegerFree
    • Full functionality
    • No usage limits
    • Community support

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 Jaeger if

  • You need distributed trace search.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Kubernetes, Docker.
  • You also want dependency graph.
Jaeger review

Questions people ask

Is Formance or Jaeger better?
Neither clearly leads. Formance starts at Free and Jaeger at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Formance or Jaeger?
Formance starts at Free and Jaeger at Free.
Does Formance or Jaeger run on more platforms?
Formance runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API. Jaeger runs on Linux, Kubernetes, Docker.
Can I use Formance for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
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 Jaeger is typically brought in for.
What can Formance do that Jaeger cannot?
Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Numscript transaction DSL, Multi-currency, Payments connectivity. Jaeger covers Distributed trace search, Dependency graph, Adaptive sampling, Pluggable storage.

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.

Jaeger: Is Jaeger free?

Yes, open source and CNCF-graduated. Costs are the storage backend you run.

Formance: Does Formance move money?

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

Jaeger: Do I use Jaeger or OpenTelemetry?

Both, usually. Instrument with OpenTelemetry and use Jaeger to store and query the traces.

Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?

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

Jaeger: Does Jaeger handle metrics and logs?

No. It is a tracing system. Metrics and logs need Prometheus, Loki or an equivalent.

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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