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APIs · head to head

Formance vs Treasury Prime

Formance logo

Formance

APIs

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Treasury Prime logo

Treasury Prime

APIs

Banking as a service platform sold to sponsor banks rather than to fintechs

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.; Treasury Prime a fintech cannot buy Treasury Prime directly since the 2024 pivot, so the sales process starts with finding a sponsor bank willing to take your programme, which adds months and removes most of your negotiating leverage on fees.
  • They diverge on capability: Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Treasury Prime covers BankOS.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Formance and Treasury Prime actually diverge.

Attributes where Formance and Treasury Prime differ
AttributeFormanceTreasury Prime
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feequote
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, APIAPI, Web

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 Treasury Prime

  • BankOS
  • OneKey Banking
  • Deposit accounts
  • Payments
  • Card issuing
  • Bank oversight tooling
  • Ledger and reconciliation
  • Programme onboarding

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

Treasury Prime

  • A community or regional bank that wants to run an embedded finance line with examiner-acceptable oversight of its fintech programmesnot Formance
  • A fintech that has already chosen its sponsor bank and needs API access to that bank rather than to a middleware layernot Formance
  • A company that wants deposits spread across several banks for FDIC coverage beyond a single institution limitnot Formance
  • A bank replacing a fragile middleware arrangement with a structure where it holds the customer contract and the oversight obligationnot 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.

Treasury Prime

  • A fintech cannot buy Treasury Prime directly since the 2024 pivot, so the sales process starts with finding a sponsor bank willing to take your programme, which adds months and removes most of your negotiating leverage on fees.
  • Commercial terms including minimum deposit balances, reserve requirements and per transaction pricing are set by the bank rather than the platform, so two fintechs on the same software can face materially different economics with no public benchmark.
  • The company cut roughly half its staff in the 2024 pivot, which reduced the teams that supported fintech customers directly and left fintechs relying on their bank for support rather than on the vendor who wrote the software.
  • Bank risk appetite is now the binding constraint, and after the Synapse failure sponsor banks decline programmes in higher risk categories that a middleware provider would once have onboarded, so some business models simply cannot get placed.
  • If your sponsor bank exits the programme or is told by its regulator to reduce fintech exposure, you are migrating your entire deposit base to another institution, and the software being the same at both ends does not make that a small project.

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

Treasury Prime

On request
  • BankOS$undefined/year
    • Sold to sponsor banks, not directly to fintechs
    • Fintech commercial terms are set by the sponsor bank
    • Minimum deposits, reserves and per transaction fees vary by bank

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 Treasury Prime if

  • You need bankos.
  • You work on API, Web.
  • You also want onekey banking.
Treasury Prime review

Questions people ask

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

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.

Treasury Prime: Can a fintech buy Treasury Prime directly?

No. Since the 2024 pivot it sells to banks. A fintech contracts with a sponsor bank running BankOS, and the bank sets the terms.

Formance: Does Formance move money?

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

Treasury Prime: Why did it change model?

Regulatory pressure on the tri-party middleware structure, sharpened by the Synapse failure. Examiners want the bank holding the customer contract and the oversight obligation, which is what bank-direct means.

Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?

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

Treasury Prime: What is OneKey Banking?

A way of spreading deposits across several banks in the network, used for FDIC coverage above a single institution limit and for resilience if one bank exits.

Formance: Do I have to use Numscript?

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

Treasury Prime: Is pricing published?

No, at neither the bank nor the fintech level. Fintech economics are set by the sponsor bank, so expect wide variation.

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