Firefly III
Firefly III ships seven develop builds in six days, still with no changelog attached.
Comparison · Finance
Increase vs Stigg
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Increase and Stigg — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Increase vs Stigg: at a glance
What is Increase?
A banking-as-a-service API that now sells compliance and blockchain rails, not just payments
Increase ships a quarterly newsletter rather than a running changelog, so each entry bundles a quarter of API work. The last three quarters have moved past core payment rails into the surrounding infrastructure: managed compliance, entity onboarding sessions, 3D Secure, push provisioning and IP-restricted API keys. SDK coverage has widened to C#, PHP and Ruby, and the documentation was reworked to be readable by LLMs.
What is Stigg?
Stigg adds credit reservation and settlement for AI operations days after its agent SDK.
Stigg can now reserve credits before an AI operation starts and settle the actual cost when it finishes. It follows the beta Agent Governance SDK, an open-source library built on Stigg's entitlements engine. Earlier October releases added an Airwallex billing backend, credit usage grouped by feature and a Stripe Projects listing.
Increase vs Stigg: editorial side-by-side
Increase
3.8FINANCE
A banking-as-a-service API that now sells compliance and blockchain rails, not just payments
◆ Current state
Increase ships a quarterly newsletter rather than a running changelog, so each entry bundles a quarter of API work. The last three quarters have moved past core payment rails into the surrounding infrastructure: managed compliance, entity onboarding sessions, 3D Secure, push provisioning and IP-restricted API keys. SDK coverage has widened to C#, PHP and Ruby, and the documentation was reworked to be readable by LLMs.
◆ Where it's heading
The arc runs from moving money to operating a bank program end to end. Early quarters added rails (FedNow, Push-to-Card, check transfers); recent ones add the compliance, onboarding and dispute machinery a customer would otherwise build or buy separately. Q2 2026 adds blockchain transfers alongside managed compliance, and flags cross-border payments and lending APIs as next.
◆ Prediction
Expect the cross-border payments and lending APIs named in the Q2 2026 letter to ship as the next quarter's headline, extending the same pattern of absorbing adjacent financial products into the core API.
Stigg
6.3FINANCE
Stigg adds credit reservation and settlement for AI operations days after its agent SDK.
◆ Current state
Stigg can now reserve credits before an AI operation starts and settle the actual cost when it finishes. It follows the beta Agent Governance SDK, an open-source library built on Stigg's entitlements engine. Earlier October releases added an Airwallex billing backend, credit usage grouped by feature and a Stripe Projects listing.
◆ Where it's heading
Credits have become Stigg's main pricing unit, and the product is adapting them to AI workloads whose cost isn't known up front. Reserve and settle, together with the governance SDK, turns the entitlements engine into a spending control for agents.
◆ Prediction
Expect the governance SDK to use reservations directly for agent limits, and more reporting on reserved versus settled usage.
Alternatives to Increase and Stigg
Other Finance products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Increase or Stigg.
InvoiceShelf
InvoiceShelf 3.0 alphas add bills and suppliers, moving it from invoicing into payables.
Shift4
Shift4 starts its Q4 venue rollout in canary while Customer Hub adds enterprise modifiers.
GOAT.tax
GOAT.tax adds Form 6765 Section G reporting for large R&D credit filers.
Kill Bill
Kill Bill keeps two release lines alive with small invoice-template changes.
Zluri
Zluri is turning SaaS management into identity governance, and Segregation of Duties is the pivot.
See all Increase alternatives → · See all Stigg alternatives →
Recent activity from Increase and Stigg
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 21h agoStiggControl subscription cancellation behavior directly from the Stigg app
- 1d agoStiggOne-click Airwallex integration via OAuth
- 3d agoStiggCredit Reservation & Settlement
- 6d agoStiggAgent Governance SDK (beta) ⚡
- 9d agoStiggCard brand and digital wallet details for payment methods
- 11d agoStiggAbility to group credit usage by feature ID
- 3mo agoIncreaseManaged compliance and blockchain transfers land in Q2 ⚡
- 6mo agoIncreaseEntity onboarding, 3D Secure and IP-restricted keys
- 10mo agoIncreaseFedNow, Push-to-Card and a Cards Disputes API
- 1y agoIncreaseEvent log filtering and check transfer work
- 1y agoIncreaseFile links, check deposit images, Apple Pay history
- 1y agoIncreaseOAuth applications, lockboxes and exports
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Increase and Stigg?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Stigg is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 3.8), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Increase better than Stigg?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Stigg is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 3.8), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Finance products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Increase?
Top Increase alternatives in Finance are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Increase alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/increase for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Stigg?
Top Stigg alternatives in Finance are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Stigg alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/stigg for the full list with editorial commentary on each.