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APIs · head to head

Formance vs Spring Cloud Gateway

Formance logo

Formance

APIs

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Spring Cloud Gateway logo

Spring Cloud Gateway

APIs

API gateway built on Project Reactor for building microservices

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.; Spring Cloud Gateway released under the Apache 2.0 license, free and open source with no commercial tier
  • They diverge on capability: Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Spring Cloud Gateway covers Routing.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Formance and Spring Cloud Gateway actually diverge.

Attributes where Formance and Spring Cloud Gateway differ
AttributeFormanceSpring Cloud Gateway
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feeopen-source
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, APIJava, Spring Boot
FoundedUnknown1998

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), 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 Spring Cloud Gateway

  • Routing
  • Path Rewriting
  • Circuit Breaker
  • Spring Boot
  • Spring Security
  • Spring Cloud
  • Java support
  • Spring Boot support

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

Spring Cloud Gateway

  • API Developmentnot Formance
  • API Gatewaynot Formance
  • API Testingnot Formance
  • API Documentationnot Formance
  • Microservicesnot 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.

Spring Cloud Gateway

  • Released under the Apache 2.0 license, free and open source with no commercial tier

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

Spring Cloud Gateway

Free
  • Open SourceFree
    • Core Spring Cloud Gateway
    • Community support

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 Spring Cloud Gateway if

  • You need routing.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Java, Spring Boot.
  • You also want path rewriting.
Spring Cloud Gateway review

Questions people ask

Is Formance or Spring Cloud Gateway better?
Neither clearly leads. Formance starts at Free and Spring Cloud Gateway at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Formance or Spring Cloud Gateway?
Formance starts at Free and Spring Cloud Gateway at Free.
Does Formance or Spring Cloud Gateway run on more platforms?
Formance runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API. Spring Cloud Gateway runs on Java, Spring Boot.
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 Spring Cloud Gateway is typically brought in for.
What can Formance do that Spring Cloud Gateway cannot?
Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Numscript transaction DSL, Multi-currency, Payments connectivity. Spring Cloud Gateway covers Routing, Path Rewriting, Circuit Breaker, Spring Boot.

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.

Spring Cloud Gateway: Is Spring Cloud Gateway free?

Yes, Spring Cloud Gateway is free and open-source software. It is part of the Spring ecosystem and available through GitHub repositories with open-source dependencies like spring-cloud-starter-gateway-server-webflux and spring-cloud-starter-gateway-server-webmvc.

Source
Formance: Does Formance move money?

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

Spring Cloud Gateway: What enterprise support is available for Spring Cloud Gateway?

Tanzu Spring provides optional enterprise support including Day 0 access to security patches for organizations requiring guaranteed support, but specific pricing is not published on the Spring Cloud Gateway project page.

Source
Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?

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

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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