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APIs · head to head

Formance vs Jitsu

Formance logo

Formance

APIs

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Jitsu logo

Jitsu

Developer Tools

Open source event pipeline that streams behavioural data to your own warehouse

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.; Jitsu jitsu is a pipeline, not a customer data platform, so identity resolution, audience building and reverse ETL are absent and a marketing team expecting Segment parity will be disappointed.
  • They diverge on capability: Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Jitsu covers Event collection.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Formance and Jitsu actually diverge.

Attributes where Formance and Jitsu differ
AttributeFormanceJitsu
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feePer month by event volume
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, APIWeb, Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, iOS, Android
CategoryAPIsDeveloper Tools

Identical on both: starting price (Free), 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 Jitsu

  • Event collection
  • Warehouse destinations
  • Connector syncs
  • Transformations
  • Bundled ClickHouse
  • Event debugger
  • Self-hosting
  • Custom domains

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

Jitsu

  • A team paying five figures a year to a customer data platform when all it actually does is send events to Snowflakenot Formance
  • An engineering group that needs event collection running inside its own VPC for data residency or security review reasonsnot Formance
  • A product analytics setup that wants raw events in the warehouse as the source of truth rather than trapped in a vendor toolnot Formance
  • A startup that needs first-party event collection on its own domain to reduce loss from tracker blocking without paying CDP pricesnot 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.

Jitsu

  • Jitsu is a pipeline, not a customer data platform, so identity resolution, audience building and reverse ETL are absent and a marketing team expecting Segment parity will be disappointed.
  • Connector sync frequency is deliberately tiered, with the free plan limited to manual runs and one daily sync, so anything approaching operational freshness requires the paid plan or self-hosting.
  • Self-hosting means you own the reliability of a system that drops data silently when misconfigured, and event loss is uniquely hard to notice because nothing errors, the numbers are just quietly lower.
  • The connector catalogue is far smaller than Fivetran or Airbyte, so if your requirement is pulling from many SaaS sources rather than pushing events, Jitsu is the wrong half of the problem.
  • It is a small company with a small commercial team, so enterprise procurement processes around security review, contractual SLAs and support escalation take longer than with an incumbent vendor.

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

Jitsu

Free
  • Open SourceFree
    • MIT licence
    • Self-host on any cloud
    • No usage limits
  • Cloud FreeFree
    • Unlimited captured events
    • 200,000 active events per month
    • Manual connector runs only
  • Business$99/month
    • 2,000,000 active events per month
    • $40 per additional million events
    • Hourly connector sync frequency
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Custom event volume
    • One minute sync frequency
    • Unlimited active syncs

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 Jitsu if

  • You need event collection.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, iOS, Android.
  • You also want warehouse destinations.
Jitsu review

Questions people ask

Is Formance or Jitsu better?
Neither clearly leads. Formance starts at Free and Jitsu at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Formance or Jitsu?
Formance starts at Free and Jitsu at Free.
Does Formance or Jitsu run on more platforms?
Formance runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API. Jitsu runs on Web, Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, iOS, Android.
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 Jitsu is typically brought in for.
What can Formance do that Jitsu cannot?
Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Numscript transaction DSL, Multi-currency, Payments connectivity. Jitsu covers Event collection, Warehouse destinations, Connector syncs, Transformations.

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.

Jitsu: Is Jitsu the same as Jitsi?

No. Jitsu is an open source event data pipeline. Jitsi is an unrelated video conferencing project.

Formance: Does Formance move money?

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

Jitsu: Can I self-host for free?

Yes. The project is MIT licensed with no usage limits when self-hosted.

Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?

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

Jitsu: How does the cost compare with Segment?

The Business plan is 99 US dollars a month for two million active events, where a per-tracked-user CDP typically costs orders of magnitude more at comparable volume.

Formance: Do I have to use Numscript?

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

Jitsu: Does Jitsu do identity resolution?

No. It transports and transforms events; identity stitching and audiences are not part of the product.

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