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APIs · head to head

Formance vs Trustly

Formance logo

Formance

APIs

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Trustly logo

Trustly

APIs

Pay-by-bank payments network, majority-owned by private equity firm Nordic Capital

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.; Trustly it is majority-owned by Nordic Capital, a private equity firm, so its long-term roadmap is ultimately oriented toward an eventual sale or IPO rather than indefinite independent operation.
  • They diverge on capability: Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Trustly covers Pay by bank checkout.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Formance and Trustly actually diverge.

Attributes where Formance and Trustly differ
AttributeFormanceTrustly
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feequote
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, APIWeb, API

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 Trustly

  • Pay by bank checkout
  • Instant refunds
  • Verified payouts
  • Multi-market bank connectivity
  • Merchant dashboard and reconciliation
  • Fraud and risk tooling

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

Trustly

  • An e-commerce merchant wanting a lower-cost alternative or complement to card payment acceptancenot Formance
  • A gaming or gambling operator needing verified, instant payouts to players' bank accountsnot Formance
  • A merchant wanting instant refunds processed directly to a customer's bank account rather than card reversal delaysnot Formance
  • A business in a market with strong open banking adoption wanting pay-by-bank as a checkout optionnot 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.

Trustly

  • It is majority-owned by Nordic Capital, a private equity firm, so its long-term roadmap is ultimately oriented toward an eventual sale or IPO rather than indefinite independent operation.
  • Consumer familiarity with paying by bank transfer still lags card payments in most markets, so merchants typically see it used as a secondary option rather than a full card replacement.
  • The 1.15 to 3.15% merchant fee range is not a single published rate, so a merchant cannot know its actual cost without a sales negotiation.
  • As with all open banking-dependent payment methods, reliability depends on the consistency of the underlying banks' own APIs, which Trustly does not control.
  • Its verified payout functionality is heavily used in gaming and gambling, a sector with additional regulatory scrutiny, which is worth factoring in when evaluating vendor risk exposure by association.

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

Trustly

On request
  • Trustly$undefined/month
    • Typical merchant cost of 1.15% to 3.15% depending on volume and market
    • Exact rate negotiated per merchant, not published as a flat card

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 Trustly if

  • You need pay by bank checkout.
  • You work on Web, API.
  • You also want instant refunds.
Trustly review

Questions people ask

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

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.

Trustly: Who owns Trustly?

Nordic Capital, a private equity firm, holds a 51.1% majority stake; Alfven & Didrikson and BlackRock hold smaller stakes.

Formance: Does Formance move money?

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

Trustly: Is Trustly going public?

It has discussed an IPO but as of its most recent comments said one remained at least a year away.

Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?

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

Trustly: What does it typically cost a merchant?

Roughly 1.15% to 3.15% of transaction value depending on volume and market, negotiated per merchant.

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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