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APIs · head to head

Formance vs Nomad

Formance logo

Formance

APIs

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Nomad logo

Nomad

Cloud

Flexible workload orchestration

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.; Nomad nomad 1.7.0 and later is licensed under the Business Source License 1.1 with IBM Corporation as licensor, not an OSI open source licence
  • They diverge on capability: Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Nomad covers Container orchestration.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Formance and Nomad actually diverge.

Attributes where Formance and Nomad differ
AttributeFormanceNomad
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feeopen-source
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, APILinux, Windows, Mac, Cloud
CategoryAPIsCloud
FoundedUnknown2015

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 Nomad

  • Container orchestration
  • Job scheduling
  • Multi-cloud support
  • Auto-scaling
  • Service discovery
  • Rolling deployments
  • Monitoring integration
  • High availability

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

Nomad

  • Container and workload orchestration across infrastructurenot Formance
  • Multi-region application deploymentnot Formance
  • Flexible scheduling for batch jobs and servicesnot 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.

Nomad

  • Nomad 1.7.0 and later is licensed under the Business Source License 1.1 with IBM Corporation as licensor, not an OSI open source licence
  • The Additional Use Grant forbids offering Nomad to third parties on a hosted or embedded basis in a paid product that competes with IBM's paid versions
  • Each version converts to MPL 2.0 only four years after that version is published
  • Resource quotas, Sentinel policies and audit logging sit in a Governance and Policy add-on module that is separate from the Enterprise base platform package
  • Multi-region deployments, multiple Vault namespaces and Nomad Autopilot advanced server management require Nomad Enterprise

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

Nomad

Free
  • Open SourceFree
    • Workload orchestration
    • Multi-cloud
    • Flexible scheduling

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 Nomad if

  • You need container orchestration.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Windows, Mac, Cloud.
  • You also want job scheduling.
Nomad review

Questions people ask

Is Formance or Nomad better?
Neither clearly leads. Formance starts at Free and Nomad at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Formance or Nomad?
Formance starts at Free and Nomad at Free.
Does Formance or Nomad run on more platforms?
Formance runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API. Nomad runs on Linux, Windows, Mac, Cloud.
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 Nomad is typically brought in for.
What can Formance do that Nomad cannot?
Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Numscript transaction DSL, Multi-currency, Payments connectivity. Nomad covers Container orchestration, Job scheduling, Multi-cloud support, Auto-scaling.

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.

Nomad: Is HashiCorp Nomad free?

HashiCorp Nomad is open source and free to use. Commercial enterprise support and hosting options may be available through HashiCorp, but the core product is free.

Source
Formance: Does Formance move money?

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

Nomad: Does HashiCorp Nomad have a pricing model?

Nomad is open source software with no published pricing tiers. HashiCorp offers commercial hosting and support for their products on a usage-based or custom pricing model, but Nomad itself is free to download and deploy.

Source
Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?

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

Nomad: What is HashiCorp's pricing model for enterprise Nomad?

HashiCorp offers flexible pricing for enterprise Nomad support including pay-as-you-go (PAYG) billing with no long-term commitment, flex plans with preferred pricing, and enterprise self-managed plans. Contact HashiCorp sales for custom quotes.

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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