Comparison · 2026 edition
Formance vs Thought Machine: core banking compared 2026.
Formance and Thought Machine side by side in the Core Banking and Ledgers Index 2026: scores, evidence, published facts and awards.
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Formance and Thought Machine side by side in the Core Banking and Ledgers Index 2026: scores, evidence, published facts and awards.
In the Core Banking and Ledgers Index, Thought Machine scores higher overall: 3.5 out of 5 (71 out of 100) against 3.0 (59), ranking 1 and 3 of 12. Thought Machine also scores higher in every segment.
Overall and segment scores out of 100, and the score out of 5.
| Score | Formance | Thought Machine |
|---|---|---|
| Score out of 5 | 3.0 | 3.5 |
| Score out of 100 | 59 | 71 |
| Overall rank | 3 of 12 | 1 of 12 |
| For banks and building societies (out of 100) | 59, rank 3 | 83, rank 1 |
| For E-money and payment firms (out of 100) | 60, rank 2 | 68, rank 1 |
| For fintechs building their own products (out of 100) | 59, rank 3 | 61, rank 2 |
| Type | Open-source ledger platform | Cloud-native core banking platform |
Each score with the evidence behind it.
| Criterion | Formance | Thought Machine |
|---|---|---|
| Product coverage | 3/5 Accounts, payments and multi-currency published; lending and cards not offered. | 5/5 Deposits, lending, cards, payments and multi-currency all published. |
| Published pricing | 3/5 Free open-source tier published; enterprise not priced. | 0/5 Not published. |
| Deployment choice | 4/5 Vendor-run in a named cloud and self-hosted; one cloud only. | 5/5 Four named public clouds, on-premise, hybrid and a managed SaaS published. |
| Integration | 3/5 SDKs, documentation and free self-serve access; no launch time. | 3/5 Public sandbox and self-service deployment; no specific time to launch. |
| Security and regulated clients | 4/5 ISO 27001:2022 and SOC 2 Type II; no named regulated clients. | 5/5 ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type 2 stated, with named regulated banks. |
| Proven scale | 0/5 Not published. | 3/5 One figure published: 20 major financial institutions. |
Each criterion is scored 0 to 5 against the best published offer in the Core Banking and Ledgers Index. 0 means not offered or not published. How it is scored
What each provider publishes on its own pages, read on 26 October 2026.
| Fact | Formance | Thought Machine |
|---|---|---|
| Product coverage | "Double-entry, multi-currency" core ledger; Wallets module with "multi-currency balances, holds, expiring balances"; Flows module for multi-step transactions; pre-built connectors for Stripe, Adyen, Wise, Fireblocks and Kraken. | Vault Core: current and transaction accounts, savings and term deposits, loans and mortgages, credit cards and BNPL (buy now, pay later), wallets and multi-currency. Vault Payments: payment orchestration, account-to-account payments, card issuing and processing. |
| Pricing | Open Source: full ledger "under MIT License" with no fee. Enterprise: "Annual subscription, custom quote based on scale". | Not published on the pages read. |
| Deployment | Cloud: "Each cloud customer runs in a dedicated private region in a separate AWS account"; also "Private Cloud or Assisted Self-Hosted deployment". | Runs on Google Cloud, AWS, Azure and IBM Cloud, on-premise, hybrid through Red Hat OpenShift, and as a managed SaaS on AWS. |
| Integration | CLI and SDKs; full source code access; documentation published; self-serve sign-up for the open-source version. | Public shared sandbox through the Vault Portal for partners; self-service deployment or client services; "Launch in weeks, not years" with no specific time stated. |
| Security and clients | ISO 27001:2022; "SOC 2 Type II audit passed with zero exceptions across all 33 criteria". | States it is "ISO 27001 certified" and holds "SOC 2 Type 2 accreditation". Logos include Lloyds, Standard Chartered, SEB, Intesa Sanpaolo, Bancolombia, Arvest, Atom and Lunar. |
| Scale | Not listed in this index | "We support 20 of the world's premier financial institutions". |
| Date read | 26 October 2026 | 26 October 2026 |
Not published or not stated by Formance: security and regulated clients and proven scale.
Not published or not stated by Thought Machine: pricing and integration.
Facts read on 26 October 2026 from: formance.com, formance.com/pricing, formance.com/security; and thoughtmachine.net, thoughtmachine.net/press-releases/…, thoughtmachine.net/delivery, thoughtmachine.net/blog/….
Awards follow from the published scores and cannot be bought.
From each provider's strongest criteria and published terms.
Fintech and crypto firms wanting a ledger they can host themselves.
Large banks replacing a legacy core on the cloud of their choice.
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