Is Formance or Portkey better?

Neither clearly leads. Formance starts at Free and Portkey at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Formance or Portkey?

Formance has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Formance and On request for Portkey.

Does Formance or Portkey run on more platforms?

Formance runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API. Portkey runs on Web.

Can I use Formance for free?

Yes. Formance has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Portkey starts at On request.

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 Portkey is typically brought in for.

What can Formance do that Portkey cannot?

Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Numscript transaction DSL, Multi-currency, Payments connectivity.

APIs · head to head

Formance vs Portkey

Formance

APIs

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

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

Portkey

APIs

Observe, govern, and secure every AI interaction across your enterprise

From: On request
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Only Formance has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
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.; Portkey the free Developer tier records only 10,000 logs per month with 3 day log retention; the $49 per month Production tier raises that to 100,000 logs with $9 per additional 100,000 requests, as of August 2026.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Formance and Portkey actually diverge.

Attributes where Formance and Portkey differ
Attribute	Formance	Portkey
Starting price	Free	On request
Pricing model	Open source, no licence fee	Unknown
Free tier	Yes	No
Platforms	Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API	Web

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated), category (APIs).

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 Portkey

Nothing recorded that Formance does not also cover.

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

Portkey

Accessing 1,600+ language models through unified API gatewaynot Formance
Monitoring and observing LLM behavior in production environmentsnot Formance
Managing costs and setting budget limits for AI spendingnot Formance
Implementing guardrails and PII redaction for secure AI interactionsnot 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.

Portkey

The free Developer tier records only 10,000 logs per month with 3 day log retention; the $49 per month Production tier raises that to 100,000 logs with $9 per additional 100,000 requests, as of August 2026.

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

Portkey

On request

No published plan breakdown. See the Portkey review.

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 Portkey if

Nothing in the data separates Portkey from Formance on the points above - pick on price and on how each one feels to use.

Portkey review

Questions people ask

Is Formance or Portkey better?: Neither clearly leads. Formance starts at Free and Portkey at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Formance or Portkey?: Formance has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Formance and On request for Portkey.
Does Formance or Portkey run on more platforms?: Formance runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API. Portkey runs on Web.
Can I use Formance for free?: Yes. Formance has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Portkey starts at On request.
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 Portkey is typically brought in for.
What can Formance do that Portkey cannot?: Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Numscript transaction DSL, Multi-currency, Payments connectivity.

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.

Portkey: What happens if I exceed my Portkey plan's request limit?

Production tier ($49/month) charges $9 per additional 100,000 requests beyond the included 100,000. Enterprise customers have custom limits determined through their service agreement. Source: https://portkey.ai/pricing

Source

Formance: Does Formance move money?

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

Portkey: Can I self-host Portkey to avoid per-request billing?

Yes. Portkey offers an Open Source self-hosted version with unlimited requests at no cost, including universal API, routing, guardrails, and load balancing features. Source: https://portkey.ai/pricing

Source

Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?

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

Portkey: How long does Portkey retain my logs and metrics?

Free Developer tier retains logs 3 days and metrics 30 days. Production tier retains logs 30 days and metrics 90 days. Enterprise tier offers custom retention periods. Source: https://portkey.ai/pricing

Source

Formance: Do I have to use Numscript?

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

Portkey: What compliance features are included in the Enterprise plan?

Enterprise tier includes SOC2 Type 2 certification, GDPR compliance, HIPAA compliance, VPC hosting, SSO, advanced guardrails, and dedicated support. Custom pricing required. Source: https://portkey.ai/pricing

Source

Formance vs Portkey

Formance

Portkey

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Formance

Only in Portkey

What people use each for

Formance

Portkey

Where each one falls short

Formance

Portkey

Pricing, plan by plan

Formance

Portkey

Which should you pick?

Choose Formance if

Choose Portkey if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Formance

More on Portkey

Keep looking

Other head to heads