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APIs · head to head

Formance vs Svix

Formance logo

Formance

APIs

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Svix logo

Svix

APIs

Outbound webhook sending as a service, with retries, signing and a customer-facing portal

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.; Svix the Professional tier at 490 US dollars a month includes the same 50,000 messages as the free tier, so the upgrade buys SLA, throughput and retention rather than volume, which is a jarring step for a growing product.
  • They diverge on capability: Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Svix covers Automatic retries.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Formance and Svix actually diverge.

Attributes where Formance and Svix differ
AttributeFormanceSvix
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feePer month by message count
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, APIWeb, Cloud, Docker

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 Svix

  • Automatic retries
  • Payload signing
  • Consumer portal
  • Event types and filtering
  • Delivery logs and replay
  • Rate limiting
  • Static source IPs
  • Language SDKs

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

Svix

  • A SaaS company adding webhooks to its API that does not want to build retry, signing and a customer debugging UI from scratchnot Formance
  • A payments or fintech product whose customers need signature verification libraries in several languages they did not writenot Formance
  • An engineering team drowning in support tickets from customers whose endpoints silently failed and who need self-service delivery logsnot Formance
  • A platform with a small number of very slow customer endpoints that must not delay deliveries to everyone elsenot 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.

Svix

  • The Professional tier at 490 US dollars a month includes the same 50,000 messages as the free tier, so the upgrade buys SLA, throughput and retention rather than volume, which is a jarring step for a growing product.
  • Only attempted messages count toward usage, but a customer with many subscribed endpoints multiplies a single event into many billable messages, and forecasting that fan-out before launch is difficult.
  • The open source server is MIT licensed but trails the hosted product in features, so self-hosting is a fallback position rather than a genuinely equivalent option.
  • Routing outbound customer traffic through a third party puts a vendor in the delivery path for events your customers may treat as contractual, which some security reviews will not accept.
  • Payload retention is 30 days on the free tier and 90 on Professional, so anyone needing longer delivery history for audit must pay for Enterprise or log independently.

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

Svix

Free
  • FreeFree
    • 50,000 messages a month included
    • Overage at $0.0001 per message
    • 99.9% uptime SLA
  • Professional$490/month
    • 50,000 messages included, same as free
    • 99.99% uptime SLA
    • 800 messages per second
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Custom volume and rate limits
    • 99.999% uptime SLA
    • Custom retention

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 Svix if

  • You need automatic retries.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Cloud, Docker.
  • You also want payload signing.
Svix review

Questions people ask

Is Formance or Svix better?
Neither clearly leads. Formance starts at Free and Svix at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Formance or Svix?
Formance starts at Free and Svix at Free.
Does Formance or Svix run on more platforms?
Formance runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API. Svix runs on Web, Cloud, Docker.
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 Svix is typically brought in for.
What can Formance do that Svix cannot?
Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Numscript transaction DSL, Multi-currency, Payments connectivity. Svix covers Automatic retries, Payload signing, Consumer portal, Event types and filtering.

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.

Svix: How much does Svix cost?

Free up to 50,000 messages a month; Professional starts at 490 US dollars a month with the same included volume but better SLA and throughput.

Formance: Does Formance move money?

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

Svix: Can I self-host it?

Yes, there is an MIT licensed server, but it lags the hosted service in features and has no SLA.

Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?

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

Svix: What counts as a message?

Attempted or transformed deliveries. Retries and messages filtered out because no endpoint subscribed are not charged.

Formance: Do I have to use Numscript?

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

Svix: Does it handle inbound webhooks?

Its focus is outbound sending on behalf of API providers, not receiving webhooks from third parties.

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