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APIs · head to head

Formance vs Zipkin

Formance logo

Formance

APIs

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Zipkin logo

Zipkin

Cloud

Distributed tracing system for microservice latency

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.; Zipkin less active development and smaller community momentum than Jaeger
  • They diverge on capability: Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Zipkin covers Trace collection and search.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Formance and Zipkin actually diverge.

Attributes where Formance and Zipkin differ
AttributeFormanceZipkin
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, APILinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hosted
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 Zipkin

  • Trace collection and search
  • Dependency diagram
  • Simple deployment
  • Pluggable storage

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

Zipkin

  • Adding distributed tracing quickly without standing up heavy infrastructurenot Formance
  • Java and Spring Boot estates, where instrumentation support is long-establishednot Formance
  • Small deployments where Jaeger is more than the problem requiresnot 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.

Zipkin

  • Less active development and smaller community momentum than Jaeger
  • Fewer features: sampling, storage options and UI are all more limited
  • The interface is dated and slower to work with on large trace volumes
  • Tracing alone still leaves metrics and logs in separate tools during an incident

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

Zipkin

Free
  • ZipkinFree
    • 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 Zipkin if

  • You need trace collection and search.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hosted.
  • You also want dependency diagram.
Zipkin review

Questions people ask

Is Formance or Zipkin better?
Neither clearly leads. Formance starts at Free and Zipkin at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Formance or Zipkin?
Formance starts at Free and Zipkin at Free.
Does Formance or Zipkin run on more platforms?
Formance runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web, API. Zipkin runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hosted.
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 Zipkin is typically brought in for.
What can Formance do that Zipkin cannot?
Formance covers Double-entry ledger, Numscript transaction DSL, Multi-currency, Payments connectivity. Zipkin covers Trace collection and search, Dependency diagram, Simple deployment, Pluggable storage.

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.

Zipkin: Is Zipkin free?

Yes, open source with no licence fee.

Formance: Does Formance move money?

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

Zipkin: Zipkin or Jaeger?

Jaeger has more momentum, more features and CNCF backing. Zipkin is lighter and quicker to stand up, and remains well supported in the Java and Spring ecosystem.

Formance: What does the enterprise version cost?

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

Zipkin: Does Zipkin work with OpenTelemetry?

Yes. OpenTelemetry can export to Zipkin, which is now the usual way to instrument for it.

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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