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APIs · head to head

Formance vs Volt

Formance logo

Formance

APIs

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Volt logo

Volt

APIs

Account-to-account pay by bank across Europe, the UK, Brazil and Australia

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.; Volt account-to-account payments carry no chargeback mechanism, so consumers lose scheme dispute protection and merchants lose a familiar framework for handling claims.
  • They diverge on capability: Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Volt covers Pay by bank.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Formance and Volt actually diverge.

Attributes where Formance and Volt differ
AttributeFormanceVolt
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feequote
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, APIWeb, REST 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 Volt

  • Pay by bank
  • Circuit Breaker
  • Virtual IBANs
  • Payouts and refunds
  • Verify
  • Stablecoin checkout

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

Volt

  • A travel seller with high average order values paying percentage card fees it wants to replace with flat transfer feesnot Formance
  • An iGaming operator needing fast deposits and payouts where card acceptance is restrictednot Formance
  • A merchant with heavy card fraud that wants strongly authenticated irreversible paymentsnot Formance
  • A marketplace verifying seller bank accounts before paying outnot 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.

Volt

  • Account-to-account payments carry no chargeback mechanism, so consumers lose scheme dispute protection and merchants lose a familiar framework for handling claims.
  • Refunds are outbound payments rather than reversals, which changes treasury handling and means a refund can fail for reasons a card refund never would.
  • Conversion is lower than a stored card because the shopper must complete a bank authentication journey, and drop-off varies significantly by bank.
  • Core pay by bank pricing is per transaction but refunds, payouts, virtual IBANs, Verify and fraud tooling are billed separately, so the real cost is a stack of line items.
  • Bank API availability and quality vary across markets, and an outage at a major bank removes a slice of your checkout with no fallback unless you keep cards live.

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

Volt

On request
  • Volt pay by bank$undefined/year
    • Per successful transaction fee, quoted by volume and market
    • Separate charges for refunds, payouts, virtual IBANs and Verify
    • Circuit Breaker fraud tooling priced as an add-on

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 Volt if

  • You need pay by bank.
  • You work on Web, REST API.
  • You also want circuit breaker.
Volt review

Questions people ask

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

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.

Volt: Are there chargebacks?

No. Bank transfers are irrevocable, so disputes are handled commercially between merchant and customer, not through a card scheme.

Formance: Does Formance move money?

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

Volt: How do refunds work?

As a separate outbound payment initiated by the merchant, which Volt charges for separately from the inbound transaction.

Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?

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

Volt: Which markets are covered?

Europe and the UK, plus Brazil and Australia, on a single API integration.

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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