Build a strong ledger foundation with transparent pricing
If you are interested in building a strong ledger foundation with transparent pricing, see Formance pricing tiers.
Formance and Modern Treasury both sit near the ledger layer of a payments stack, and teams evaluating one often end up evaluating the other. Modern Treasury is built around bank connectivity and payment initiation, while Formance is built as the core ledger for internal balances, multi-party flows, and fiat-plus-digital-asset accounting.
This guide compares the two platforms in 2026, including what each product does, how their plans and pricing differ, and which one fits best depending on where your complexity actually lives.
Modern Treasury and Formance sit at different layers of the payments stack: Modern Treasury executes external bank payments, while Formance provides the core ledger beneath them. The two products can be evaluated without a rip-and-replace frame because in many architectures, Formance and Modern Treasury run together.
Formance is an open-source programmable ledger platform with enterprise options, built around a core ledger module that uses Numscript, a domain-specific language for encoding transaction logic. The platform extends to Connectivity, Flows, Reconciliation, and Wallets on top of the ledger core.
Formance enforces financial invariants (double-entry accounting, balance constraints, and immutability) as first-class database constraints rather than application-layer conventions that can be bypassed. It also offers atomic guarantees and regulatory-grade traceability.
The Numscript DSL lets teams model complex transactions declaratively. Unlike competitors focused on traditional payment rails, Formance unifies fiat, crypto, stablecoins, and custom tokens in a single ledger, so a stablecoin transfer and a USD payout share one balance model and one audit trail.
A Numscript payout expresses a multi-leg financial transaction (one omnibus debit, multiple recipient credits, and a fee leg) as a single atomic block that either commits in full or fails as one unit.
Consider a $10,000 payout from an omnibus account split across two recipients while retaining a $100 platform fee. The bank sees one debit, but the internal ledger has to record three postings that all commit together.
In Numscript, the entire transaction fits in a handful of lines:
// PAYOUT_SPLIT
// Split one $10,000.00 omnibus debit across two recipients and platform fees
send [USD/2 594000] (
source = @platform:omnibus:main
destination = @users:recipientA:wallet
)
send [USD/2 396000] (
source = @platform:omnibus:main
destination = @users:recipientB:wallet
)
send [USD/2 10000] (
source = @platform:omnibus:main
destination = @platform:revenue:fees
)
set_tx_meta("event_type", "payout_split")
set_tx_meta("payout_id", "pyt001")
USD/2 declares two decimal places, so the postings move $5,940 to recipient A, $3,960 to recipient B, and $100 to platform fee revenue. All three legs commit as one atomic transaction, or none do, which gives the ledger layer regulatory-grade traceability.
The financial logic lives in Numscript inside the ledger, where engineering and finance teams can validate it together, rather than being scattered across application code that only one engineer understands.
Formance publishes its base pricing and tier structure openly, and offers two clear tiers: a free Open Source edition under MIT license and a custom-quoted Enterprise subscription starting at $120K/year for Self-Hosted deployments.
| Plan | What's included | Price |
| Open Source | A production-grade, double-entry core ledger under MIT License, with Numscript transaction DSL, multi-currency and multi-asset tracking, Generic Connector for any provider, CLI & SDKs, full source code access, and deploy anywhere on your infrastructure | Free, forever, MIT License |
| Enterprise (base) | Core ledger, generic connectivity, deployment stack, 24/7 support and incident response, professional services for implementation. Includes 1 million ledger transactions annually and unlimited sandboxes | Starting at $120K/year (Self-Hosted); custom quote for Private Cloud |
| Enterprise add-on modules | Reconciliation, Flows (payment orchestration), and premium or digital-asset connectivity are priced separately on top of the base license | Priced per module, confirm current rates with sales |
Formance's pricing model rests on three principles: no hidden fees, no usage metering on the base license, and pricing tied to transaction volume tiers, environments, and regulatory scope rather than per-transaction billing.
Teams typically prototype on the free open-source ledger, adopt the Enterprise base when they need production support, and add modules like Reconciliation or Flows when the use case demands them.
Modern Treasury is a fintech infrastructure platform that combines an integrated payment service provider with a double-entry ledger, serving fintechs, neobanks, and embedded-finance teams that need bank connectivity plus reconciliation in one system.
The platform moves money across multiple payment rails, including ACH, wires, RTP, FedNow, push-to-card, and stablecoins, under a usage-based pricing model that scales with platform volume.
Modern Treasury operates as a payment-operations platform that connects to banks, initiates payments across US rails, and ties reconciliation to payment objects.
On February 18, 2026, Modern Treasury launched Modern Treasury Payments, an integrated PSP that unifies accounts, payment rails, compliance, ledgering, and stablecoin orchestration in one API. Teams can programmatically open named U.S. accounts, accept pay-ins, and make payouts via ACH, wire, RTP, FedNow, push-to-card, and stablecoins (including USDG, USDP, and USDC).
Modern Treasury bundles six interconnected products under a single platform:
Modern Treasury pricing is built on three billing dimensions (platform access, payment usage, and accounts and compliance) that together shape the total invoice. All three dimensions apply toward a single annual minimum commitment.
For a regulated fintech operating across several markets or asset types, the accounts-and-compliance dimension compounds.
Every new market adds KYC volume, and every new account structure adds monitored accounts. One constraint worth clarifying before the sales call is that virtual-account availability can depend on the bank-connection model and may differ between direct-bank and PSP configurations.
For on- and off-ramps between fiat and stablecoins, the fees include two components: a fiat rail fee and a conversion fee. The fiat fee depends on the payment rail used (e.g., ACH, wire), while the conversion fee applies when swapping between fiat and stablecoins.
Modern Treasury does not offer traditional tiered plans. Instead, it sells a single custom-quoted platform with modular product adoption, directing potential clients to contact sales for a tailored pricing roadmap rather than choosing from standardized, publicly advertised tiers.
In practice, buyers configure a plan across two key dimensions:
A customer does not need an existing bank relationship to start; teams can begin with Modern Treasury's integrated PSP and bring their own bank later. The typical options are:
Teams pick from Payments, Ledgers, Reconciliation, Virtual Accounts, Compliance, and Stablecoin on/off-ramps. Each module contributes to platform-access and usage fees.
Modern Treasury does not offer a free tier or a self-serve plan. Every engagement includes an annual minimum commitment and an enterprise sales motion rather than self-serve checkout.
Because those plans aren't published as a rate card, the only way to estimate cost before a sales call is to model it from public rail-cost benchmarks.
Modern Treasury doesn't publish per-unit pricing. It's negotiated and usage-based, quoted directly to each customer.
So instead of citing rates that don't exist publicly, this model uses publicly available rail-cost benchmarks (bank and processor pricing for ACH, RTP, and wire) as a stand-in for what a usage-based platform layering fees on top of these rails might charge.
Use it as a directional estimate, not a quote about Modern Treasury.
At a representative rail mix of 85% ACH, 14% RTP, and 1% domestic wire, this benchmark-based model lands in the range of roughly $45,500–$191,500/mo at 100,000 transactions, before any platform-access or compliance fees a usage-based vendor might layer on top.
Your actual quote from Modern Treasury, or any usage-based vendor, will differ based on negotiated rates, which typically compress at higher volumes.
| Rail (share of mix) | Benchmark per-unit range | Monthly cost at 100,000 txns |
| ACH, standard (85%) | $0.20–$1.50 | $17,000–$127,500 |
| RTP (14%) | $0.25–$1.00 | $3,500–$14,000 |
| Domestic wire (1%) | $25–$50 | $25,000–$50,000 |
| International wire | Not publicly disclosed | Not modeled |
| Benchmark total | $45,500–$191,500 |
This is a rail-cost benchmark. Modern Treasury's own pricing page directs prospects to a sales conversation rather than listing rates. Because rail mix shifts with every new market or product launch, and because real vendor quotes move with negotiated volume discounts, this model needs rebuilding each planning cycle rather than being treated as a fixed reference.
If your product needs stablecoin rails, add the fiat-rail fee plus the conversion fee as a separate line. Stablecoin on/off-ramp pricing also isn't publicly disclosed by usage-based vendors in this space.
| Dimensions | Formance | Modern Treasury |
| Core function | Core ledger (open source), with optional add-on modules for Connectivity, Flows, Reconciliation, and Wallets | Bank connectivity and payment initiation, with a ledgering add-on |
| Deployment | Open Source / Community Edition; Enterprise Self-Hosted; Enterprise Private Cloud | Cloud-only managed service |
| Source access | Formance Ledger and open-source components available under MIT license; Enterprise modules available under commercial terms | Closed source |
| Asset model | Fiat, crypto, stablecoins, and custom tokens in one ledger | Fiat rails plus stablecoin support via integrated PSP |
| Pricing transparency | Free Open Source tier; Enterprise base starting at $120K/year (Self-Hosted); functional modules priced separately; no per-transaction billing | Sales-quoted, usage-based, annual minimum commitment; no public rate card |
| Starting cost | $0 (self-hosted Open Source) | Custom quote only |
Choose Formance if you need a programmable core ledger and already have payment execution handled.
Choose Modern Treasury if you need US bank connectivity and payment execution with a lightweight ledger.
You can run both together if you need external payment execution and a regulator-grade internal ledger with multi-asset support.
Choose to run Formance on its own if you:
Consider running Modern Treasury on its own if you:
If two or more of the following signals apply, the more durable architecture is Formance for balance tracking and financial logic, with Modern Treasury above it for external payment execution: