APIs · head to head
Formance vs Teable
Formance
APIs
Open source double-entry ledger and payment orchestration for money-moving software
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
Teable
Spreadsheets
Spreadsheet interface over real PostgreSQL tables, so the data stays queryable by anything that speaks SQL
- 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.; Teable the automation builder is far less capable than the established commercial alternatives, so multi step workflows usually end up in an external tool that must be paid for and maintained separately.
- They diverge on capability: Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Teable covers PostgreSQL native storage.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Formance and Teable actually diverge.
Identical on both: starting price (Free), pricing model (Open source, no licence fee), 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 Teable
- PostgreSQL native storage
- Multiple views
- Linked records and rollups
- Generated REST API
- Real time collaboration
- Self hosting via Docker
- Field level permissions
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 Teable
- A fintech whose homegrown balances table produced numbers finance could not reconcile and now needs proper double-entry before an auditnot Teable
- A payments team that wants one normalised model across several PSPs so reconciliation is not written separately for eachnot Teable
- A company that wants its ledger under a licence it can keep running even if the vendor disappearsnot Teable
Teable
- A team that has hit the record ceiling of a hosted spreadsheet database and does not want to move to raw SQLnot Formance
- Operational data that a business intelligence tool must also read directly, without an export or a sync jobnot Formance
- A regulated or data resident organisation that needs the underlying database inside its own infrastructurenot Formance
- An internal tool where a grid interface and a REST API over the same table are both requirednot 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.
Teable
- The automation builder is far less capable than the established commercial alternatives, so multi step workflows usually end up in an external tool that must be paid for and maintained separately.
- Self hosting moves PostgreSQL backups, version upgrades, connection pooling and capacity planning onto your team, and the licence saving disappears if that time is costed honestly.
- The integration catalogue is small, so connecting to a common business system often means writing against the REST API rather than installing a connector.
- The project is young relative to the products it replaces, and interface and API changes still arrive at a pace that requires reading release notes before upgrading.
- Storing every table as a real PostgreSQL table means schema changes are real migrations, so a careless field type change on a large table can lock it far longer than a spreadsheet user would expect.
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
Teable
Free- Self hosted open sourceFree
- No licence fee
- Unlimited rows subject to your PostgreSQL capacity
- Docker deployment
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 Teable if
- You need postgresql native storage.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Web, Linux.
- You also want multiple views.
Questions people ask
- Is Formance or Teable better?
- Neither clearly leads. Formance starts at Free and Teable at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Formance or Teable?
- Formance starts at Free and Teable at Free.
- Does Formance or Teable run on more platforms?
- Formance runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API. Teable runs on Web, Linux.
- 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 Teable is typically brought in for.
- What can Formance do that Teable cannot?
- Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Numscript transaction DSL, Multi-currency, Payments connectivity. Teable covers PostgreSQL native storage, Multiple views, Linked records and rollups, Generated REST API.
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.
Teable: How many rows can it actually hold?
As many as your PostgreSQL instance can serve. There is no product imposed record limit on the self hosted edition, which is the main reason to choose it.
Formance: Does Formance move money?
No. It records and orchestrates movements; the actual payments happen at a PSP or bank you connect.
Teable: Can I query the data with SQL directly?
Yes. Tables are real PostgreSQL tables, so any SQL client or reporting tool can read them.
Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?
Not published. It is an annual subscription quoted per customer.
Teable: Is self hosting genuinely free?
The licence is. The database server, backups and the engineer maintaining them are not.
Formance: Do I have to use Numscript?
Yes for anything beyond the simplest transfers. It is how multi-party transactions are expressed atomically.
Teable: Does it replace Airtable feature for feature?
No. Views and field types are close; automations, apps and the integration catalogue are not.
Teable: What happens to my data if the project stops?
It remains in a standard PostgreSQL database that you control, which is a materially better exit than a proprietary export format.
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