Softwr

APIs · head to head

Formance vs Thanos

Formance logo

Formance

APIs

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Thanos logo

Thanos

Cloud

Highly available Prometheus with long-term object storage

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.; Thanos several components — sidecar, store, querier, compactor, ruler — each with its own configuration and failure modes
  • They diverge on capability: Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Thanos covers Global query.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Formance and Thanos actually diverge.

Attributes where Formance and Thanos differ
AttributeFormanceThanos
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, APIKubernetes, Linux, Docker
CategoryAPIsCloud

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 Thanos

  • Global query
  • Object storage retention
  • Deduplication
  • Downsampling

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

Thanos

  • Querying metrics across many clusters or regions from one placenot Formance
  • Retaining metrics for years without local disk growthnot Formance
  • Removing the gap that appears when a single Prometheus instance restartsnot 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.

Thanos

  • Several components — sidecar, store, querier, compactor, ruler — each with its own configuration and failure modes
  • The compactor is a common source of operational trouble and must not run twice against the same bucket
  • Query latency over object storage is meaningfully higher than local Prometheus
  • Object storage costs and API request charges become real at high volume

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

Thanos

Free
  • ThanosFree
    • Full functionality
    • No usage limits
    • 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 Thanos if

  • You need global query.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Kubernetes, Linux, Docker.
  • You also want object storage retention.
Thanos review

Questions people ask

Is Formance or Thanos better?
Neither clearly leads. Formance starts at Free and Thanos at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Formance or Thanos?
Formance starts at Free and Thanos at Free.
Does Formance or Thanos run on more platforms?
Formance runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API. Thanos runs on Kubernetes, Linux, 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 Thanos is typically brought in for.
What can Formance do that Thanos cannot?
Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Numscript transaction DSL, Multi-currency, Payments connectivity. Thanos covers Global query, Object storage retention, Deduplication, Downsampling.

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.

Thanos: Is Thanos free?

Yes, open source and CNCF-incubating. Costs are the object storage it uses.

Formance: Does Formance move money?

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

Thanos: Does Thanos replace Prometheus?

No. It runs alongside existing Prometheus servers, adding global query, deduplication and long-term storage.

Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?

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

Thanos: Thanos or VictoriaMetrics?

Thanos layers onto Prometheus using object storage and is the more established multi-cluster answer. VictoriaMetrics is a separate store aiming at lower resource use and fewer moving parts.

Formance: Do I have to use Numscript?

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

Share

Related pages

More on Formance

More on Thanos

Keep looking

Other head to heads