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APIs · head to head

Formance vs Salt Edge

Formance logo

Formance

APIs

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Salt Edge logo

Salt Edge

APIs

Independent open banking aggregator covering Europe by PSD2 API and other markets by direct connection

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

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.; Salt Edge coverage outside regulated open banking markets is not all direct bank API, and connections that are not regulated interfaces break when a bank changes its systems, so a headline country count overstates the reliability you will actually experience.
  • They diverge on capability: Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Salt Edge covers Account information.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Formance and Salt Edge actually diverge.

Attributes where Formance and Salt Edge differ
AttributeFormanceSalt Edge
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feequote
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, APIWeb, API

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 Salt Edge

  • Account information
  • Payment initiation
  • Wide country coverage
  • Open Banking Gateway
  • Categorisation and enrichment
  • Consent management
  • Partner and white label
  • Sandbox

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

Salt Edge

  • A lender operating across several European and non-EU markets that needs one aggregation contract rather than a different provider per countrynot Formance
  • A fintech that wants an aggregator not owned by a card network because its use case competes with card productsnot Formance
  • An accounting or treasury product that needs bank feeds in markets the large aggregators do not servenot Formance
  • A bank that must publish PSD2-compliant APIs and would rather buy the compliance layer than build itnot 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.

Salt Edge

  • Coverage outside regulated open banking markets is not all direct bank API, and connections that are not regulated interfaces break when a bank changes its systems, so a headline country count overstates the reliability you will actually experience.
  • Pricing is not published and is usage-based, so two providers cannot be compared without running both sales processes, and cost grows with the connected user base rather than with revenue.
  • Support and engineering are distributed across Eastern Europe and Canada, and buyers in other time zones report slower turnaround on connection-specific breakages than they get from a domestic provider.
  • PSD2 consent rules require customers to reauthenticate periodically, and Salt Edge cannot change that, so any product depending on continuous data must design for consent expiry and the drop-off it causes.
  • United States coverage is weaker than Plaid or Mastercard Open Banking, so a company with meaningful US volume ends up running two aggregators and normalising between them.

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

Salt Edge

On request
  • Salt Edge Open Banking API$undefined/year
    • Account information and payment initiation
    • Coverage across 50 plus countries
    • Consent management and enrichment

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 Salt Edge if

  • You need account information.
  • You work on Web, API.
  • You also want payment initiation.
Salt Edge review

Questions people ask

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

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.

Salt Edge: Who owns Salt Edge?

It is independently owned, unlike Tink (Visa), Finicity (Mastercard) or Yodlee (Envestnet), which matters if your use case competes with the owner.

Formance: Does Formance move money?

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

Salt Edge: Is all coverage direct bank API?

No. Inside PSD2 markets connections use regulated APIs; elsewhere coverage relies on direct connections whose reliability depends on the bank not changing its systems. Ask for a per-institution answer.

Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?

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

Salt Edge: Does it do payments as well as data?

Yes, payment initiation is supported in European markets where PSD2 applies.

Formance: Do I have to use Numscript?

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

Salt Edge: What does it cost?

Not published. Pricing is usage-based and quoted, though the sandbox is free.

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