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APIs · head to head

Formance vs Logto

Formance logo

Formance

APIs

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Logto logo

Logto

Cybersecurity

Open-source identity and authentication infrastructure for apps and APIs

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.; Logto advanced features like RBAC, organizations, MFA, and enterprise SSO are billed as separate paid add-ons rather than included in Pro.
  • They diverge on capability: Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Logto covers Prebuilt sign-in UI.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Formance and Logto actually diverge.

Attributes where Formance and Logto differ
AttributeFormanceLogto
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feefreemium
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, APIweb, api
CategoryAPIsCybersecurity

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 Logto

  • Prebuilt sign-in UI
  • Social connectors
  • Role-based access control
  • Multi-factor authentication
  • Machine-to-machine apps
  • Audit logs

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

Logto

  • Adding sign-in to a new SaaS productnot Formance
  • Implementing SSO for B2B customersnot Formance
  • Securing internal APIs with M2M tokensnot Formance
  • Adding RBAC and organizations to a multi-tenant appnot 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.

Logto

  • Advanced features like RBAC, organizations, MFA, and enterprise SSO are billed as separate paid add-ons rather than included in Pro.
  • Enterprise pricing is not published and requires contacting sales.
  • Token-based billing can make cost forecasting harder than flat per-MAU pricing for high-traffic apps.

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

Logto

Free
  • FreeFree
    • Up to 50,000 MAU
    • 50K tokens included
    • 3 applications
  • Pro$24/month
    • Unlimited MAU and applications
    • 3 included API resources
    • Passkey sign-in

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 Logto if

  • You need prebuilt sign-in ui.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on web, api.
  • You also want social connectors.
Logto review

Questions people ask

Is Formance or Logto better?
Neither clearly leads. Formance starts at Free and Logto at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Formance or Logto?
Formance starts at Free and Logto at Free.
Does Formance or Logto run on more platforms?
Formance runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API. Logto runs on web, api.
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 Logto is typically brought in for.
What can Formance do that Logto cannot?
Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Numscript transaction DSL, Multi-currency, Payments connectivity. Logto covers Prebuilt sign-in UI, Social connectors, Role-based access control, Multi-factor authentication.

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.

Logto: What does Logto cost?

Logto offers a Free plan at $0/month, a Pro plan starting at $24/month with 50K free tokens included, and a custom-priced Enterprise plan. Extra add-ons like RBAC or MFA are billed separately on Pro.

Source
Formance: Does Formance move money?

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

Logto: Is there a free plan, and what are its limits?

Yes. The Free plan supports up to 50,000 monthly active users, 3 total applications, 1 machine-to-machine app, 3 social connectors, 1 webhook, and 3-day audit log retention.

Source
Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?

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

Logto: How is usage metered?

Logto uses token-based billing: only access tokens issued for authentication and authorization activity are counted, rather than charging purely per MAU.

Source
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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