APIs · head to head
Formance vs Weavr
Formance
APIs
Open source double-entry ledger and payment orchestration for money-moving software
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
Weavr
APIs
Packaged embedded finance for B2B SaaS, with an in-house EU e-money licence
- From
- On request
- Rated
- -
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.; Weavr products are packaged rather than open, so a flow Weavr does not support is not something you can build around, and you discover the limits after integrating.
- They diverge on capability: Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Weavr covers Plug-and-play products.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Formance and Weavr actually diverge.
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 Weavr
- Plug-and-play products
- Regulated cover
- Card issuing
- Multi-currency accounts
- Identity and onboarding
- Data insights
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 Weavr
- A fintech whose homegrown balances table produced numbers finance could not reconcile and now needs proper double-entry before an auditnot Weavr
- A payments team that wants one normalised model across several PSPs so reconciliation is not written separately for eachnot Weavr
- A company that wants its ledger under a licence it can keep running even if the vendor disappearsnot Weavr
Weavr
- A project management SaaS adding expense cards without hiring a compliance officernot Formance
- A marketplace paying out sellers from accounts held inside its own productnot Formance
- A procurement platform issuing virtual cards against approved purchase ordersnot Formance
- A European SaaS vendor wanting a regulated entity to sit behind its financial featuresnot 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.
Weavr
- Products are packaged rather than open, so a flow Weavr does not support is not something you can build around, and you discover the limits after integrating.
- Programme economics depend on interchange, and SaaS vendors routinely overestimate how much card volume their customers will actually route through the embedded product.
- It is a small company with limited headcount supporting a regulated dependency, which is a real concentration risk for a feature your customers rely on.
- Monthly minimums on card programmes mean a slow-adopting customer base leaves you paying for volume you never reach.
- European interchange caps hold programme revenue well below what US embedded finance case studies suggest, so imported business cases do not transfer.
Pricing, plan by plan
Formance
Free- Open SourceFree
- MIT licensed core ledger
- Numscript transaction DSL
- Multi-currency tracking
- Enterprise$undefined/year
- Managed or private deployment
- Payments connectivity and reconciliation
- Support with response commitments
Weavr
On request- Weavr embedded finance$undefined/year
- Platform subscription plus per-account and per-card fees
- Interchange share negotiated as part of the commercial terms
- Monthly minimums apply to card programmes
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 Weavr if
- You need plug-and-play products.
- You work on Web, REST API.
- You also want regulated cover.
Questions people ask
- Is Formance or Weavr better?
- Neither clearly leads. Formance starts at Free and Weavr at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Formance or Weavr?
- Formance has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Formance and On request for Weavr.
- Does Formance or Weavr run on more platforms?
- Formance runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API. Weavr runs on Web, REST API.
- Can I use Formance for free?
- Yes. Formance has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Weavr 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 Weavr is typically brought in for.
- What can Formance do that Weavr cannot?
- Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Numscript transaction DSL, Multi-currency, Payments connectivity. Weavr covers Plug-and-play products, Regulated cover, Card issuing, Multi-currency accounts.
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.
Weavr: Do I need my own financial licence?
No. Weavr holds an e-money licence, including a Maltese authorisation for the EU, and acts as the regulated entity for the embedded product.
Formance: Does Formance move money?
No. It records and orchestrates movements; the actual payments happen at a PSP or bank you connect.
Weavr: How is it different from a banking-as-a-service API?
It sells finished product shapes with compliance built in rather than raw banking primitives, which trades flexibility for a much shorter route to launch.
Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?
Not published. It is an annual subscription quoted per customer.
Weavr: How does Weavr make money?
Platform fees plus per-account and per-card charges, with a negotiated share of card interchange.
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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