APIs · head to head
Formance vs OWASP ZAP
Formance
APIs
Open source double-entry ledger and payment orchestration for money-moving software
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
OWASP ZAP
Cybersecurity
Free, open-source web application scanner and intercepting proxy, now governed by the Software Security Project.
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
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.; OWASP ZAP authenticated scanning of modern single-page applications is the hard part and ZAP makes you build it by hand: session handling, token refresh and login scripts are configured per application, and a misconfigured session means the scanner logs itself out and reports a clean result for pages it never reached.
- They diverge on capability: Formance covers Double-entry ledger, OWASP ZAP covers Intercepting proxy.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Formance and OWASP ZAP actually diverge.
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 OWASP ZAP
- Intercepting proxy
- Passive scanner
- Active scanner
- AJAX spider
- Automation Framework
- Headless daemon and REST API
- Docker images
- Add-on marketplace
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 OWASP ZAP
- A fintech whose homegrown balances table produced numbers finance could not reconcile and now needs proper double-entry before an auditnot OWASP ZAP
- A payments team that wants one normalised model across several PSPs so reconciliation is not written separately for eachnot OWASP ZAP
- A company that wants its ledger under a licence it can keep running even if the vendor disappearsnot OWASP ZAP
OWASP ZAP
- Adding a baseline security scan to every application's pipeline where per-target commercial licensing would limit coverage to a handfulnot Formance
- Manual penetration testing that needs an intercepting proxy, request replay and fuzzing without a paid licence per testernot Formance
- Teaching developers what an attack against their own endpoint looks like, using a tool they can install themselvesnot Formance
- Pre-release regression scanning of an internal application that would never justify a commercial DAST subscriptionnot 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.
OWASP ZAP
- Authenticated scanning of modern single-page applications is the hard part and ZAP makes you build it by hand: session handling, token refresh and login scripts are configured per application, and a misconfigured session means the scanner logs itself out and reports a clean result for pages it never reached.
- There is no support contract in the product, so when a scan breaks the day before a release the escalation path is a GitHub issue and a community chat, which is not an answer that satisfies a delivery manager or an auditor who wants a named responsible party.
- Active scanning sends genuine attack traffic, so it can create records, trigger emails, exhaust rate limits or destabilise a fragile environment, and pointing it at production without prior agreement produces an incident rather than a test result.
- Output needs triage: passive rules generate large volumes of low-severity informational findings about headers and cookie flags that bury the few results that matter, and a team without someone tuning the rule set stops reading the report within a few sprints.
- As a dynamic scanner it can only test what it can reach, so authorisation flaws between accounts, business logic abuse and anything behind an undiscovered endpoint go unreported, and a passing ZAP scan is evidence of nothing more than the absence of the classes of bug it looks for.
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
OWASP ZAP
Free- Free & Open SourceFree
- Full functionality
- Active & passive scanning
- Spider
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.
Choose OWASP ZAP if
- You need intercepting proxy.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Desktop, Cli, Api.
- You also want passive scanner.
Questions people ask
- Is Formance or OWASP ZAP better?
- Neither clearly leads. Formance starts at Free and OWASP ZAP at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Formance or OWASP ZAP?
- Formance starts at Free and OWASP ZAP at Free.
- Does Formance or OWASP ZAP run on more platforms?
- Formance runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API. OWASP ZAP runs on Desktop, Cli, 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 OWASP ZAP is typically brought in for.
- What can Formance do that OWASP ZAP cannot?
- Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Numscript transaction DSL, Multi-currency, Payments connectivity. OWASP ZAP covers Intercepting proxy, Passive scanner, Active scanner, AJAX spider.
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.
OWASP ZAP: Is it still called OWASP ZAP?
The project left OWASP in August 2024 and is now governed by the Software Security Project, with core development sponsored by Checkmarx. The tool is now just ZAP, though most existing documentation, courses and search results still use the OWASP name.
Formance: Does Formance move money?
No. It records and orchestrates movements; the actual payments happen at a PSP or bank you connect.
OWASP ZAP: Is it free for commercial use?
Yes. It is Apache 2.0 licensed, with no per-application, per-scan or per-user cost, and it can be used and modified commercially without a licence agreement.
Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?
Not published. It is an annual subscription quoted per customer.
OWASP ZAP: Can it replace a penetration test?
No. It automates checks for known vulnerability classes against endpoints it can reach. It does not reason about business logic, chain findings into an attack, or test authorisation between accounts, which is most of what a tester actually does.
Formance: Do I have to use Numscript?
Yes for anything beyond the simplest transfers. It is how multi-party transactions are expressed atomically.
OWASP ZAP: Does it run in CI?
Yes, through the official Docker images and the Automation Framework, which defines scan jobs in YAML so configuration lives in the repository. A baseline passive scan is the usual starting point because it is fast and non-intrusive.
OWASP ZAP: How does it compare to Burp Suite?
Burp Suite Professional is the more polished manual testing tool and has a stronger scanner and extension ecosystem, but it is licensed per tester and Burp Suite Enterprise per target. ZAP is the better fit where cost per target is the binding constraint; many teams use both.
Related pages
Other head to heads
- Formance vs Moov
- Formance vs Column
- Formance vs Convoy
- Formance vs Sila
- Formance vs Increase
- Formance vs Yapily
- Formance vs 10x Banking
- Formance vs Tribe Payments
- Formance vs Dwolla
- Formance vs Kong
- Formance vs Tyk
- Formance vs Volt
- Formance vs Enable Banking
- Formance vs Flybits
- Formance vs i2c
- Formance vs KeystoneJS
- Formance vs Liveblocks
- Formance vs 1Password
- Formance vs Bitdefender Total Security
- Formance vs Norton 360
- Formance vs LastPass
- Formance vs Bitwarden
- Formance vs Burp Suite
- Formance vs Metasploit
- Formance vs Wireshark
- Formance vs authentik
- Formance vs Authelia
- Formance vs Infisical
- Formance vs Trivy
- Formance vs Feedzai
- Formance vs Frontegg
- Formance vs HashiCorp Boundary
- Formance vs JumpCloud
- Formance vs McAfee Total Protection
- OWASP ZAP vs Moov
- OWASP ZAP vs Column
- OWASP ZAP vs Convoy
- OWASP ZAP vs Sila
- OWASP ZAP vs Increase
- OWASP ZAP vs Yapily
- OWASP ZAP vs 10x Banking
- OWASP ZAP vs Tribe Payments
- OWASP ZAP vs Dwolla
- OWASP ZAP vs Kong
- OWASP ZAP vs Tyk
- OWASP ZAP vs Volt
- OWASP ZAP vs Enable Banking
- OWASP ZAP vs Flybits
- OWASP ZAP vs i2c
- OWASP ZAP vs KeystoneJS
- OWASP ZAP vs Liveblocks
- OWASP ZAP vs 1Password
- OWASP ZAP vs Bitdefender Total Security
- OWASP ZAP vs Norton 360
- OWASP ZAP vs LastPass
- OWASP ZAP vs Bitwarden
- OWASP ZAP vs Burp Suite
- OWASP ZAP vs Metasploit
- OWASP ZAP vs Wireshark
- OWASP ZAP vs authentik
- OWASP ZAP vs Authelia
- OWASP ZAP vs Infisical
- OWASP ZAP vs Trivy
- OWASP ZAP vs Feedzai
- OWASP ZAP vs Frontegg
- OWASP ZAP vs HashiCorp Boundary
- OWASP ZAP vs JumpCloud
- OWASP ZAP vs McAfee Total Protection