A sandbox is a free, fully-managed Formance Cloud stack you can use for design, testing, and learning. Same APIs, same modules, same behaviour as a production stack.
What you get#
- Every module, ready to use. Ledger, Payments, Auth, Gateway, and Stargate are enabled by default. The EE modules — Wallets, Flows, Reconciliation, Webhooks, Search — are free to enable on your sandbox with
fctl stack modules enable <module>(anddisableto turn them back off). - A real HTTPS endpoint. Each stack gets its own URL on
*.<region>.sandbox.formance.cloud. Call it from anywhere: your laptop, CI, a deployed app. - The Portal at portal.formance.cloud to manage organisations, stacks, members, and OAuth clients.
- The Console at console.formance.cloud to browse ledgers, accounts, transactions, and connector payments visually.
Production parity
Every API call, every Numscript program, every webhook fires exactly the way it will in production. Code you write against the sandbox ships unchanged.
Get a sandbox#
Sign in (or create an account — it's free) on the Portal:
Once you have an account, the Platform Quick Start walks you through installing fctl, authenticating, and creating your first sandbox in a few commands.
Sandbox vs production
Sandboxes are sized for design and test, not production. Data inside is correct and behaves identically to a production stack — but we don't run backups, the stack sleeps after prolonged inactivity (the first request after a sleep takes a little longer to warm up), and it auto-disables after 15 days then deletes after 30. Need yours kept past that window? Ask support to restore it.
Production stacks run with the operational discipline you'd expect from core financial infrastructure: backups, no sleep, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certified, DORA-compliant, and regular third-party penetration testing.
→ Formance Trust Center — audit reports, sub-processor list, certifications, and the full security posture.