Adminmate vs Forest Admin: which back-office for your team?

Adminmate and Forest Admin (now simply called Forest) have a lot in common. Both give your team a back-office on top of your own database, and both use the same privacy-first architecture: a component runs in your infrastructure, next to your database, and your data never goes through the vendor’s servers.

But in the last years, the two products went in different directions. Here is an honest comparison to help you choose.

Prices and features checked in October 2026 on the official websites.

The short version

• Choose Forest if you are a fintech or a regulated company that needs compliance workflows out of the box — KYC/KYB onboarding, AML, sanctions screening, case management — with enterprise support, and the budget that goes with it.
• Choose Adminmate if you want a general-purpose back-office for your Node.js app, for the whole team, for free.

Same architecture

Both tools split the back-office in two:

• a hosted interface, used by your team in the browser;
• a component in your infrastructure — the Data API for Adminmate, the agent for Forest — that connects to your database and executes every read and write.

The browser talks directly to the component in your infrastructure, so the content of your database never goes through the vendor’s servers. If data privacy is your main concern, both tools are good answers.

Positioning

Forest now presents itself as “the leading fintech backoffice for the agentic era”. Its website focuses on operations for neobanks, payments, lending, crypto and insurance companies: KYC and KYB onboarding, sanctions and PEP screening, transaction monitoring, disputes, case inboxes and AI agents governed through an MCP server.

Adminmate stays a general-purpose back-office: the data explorer, actions and dashboards that any SaaS, marketplace or e-commerce business needs to run its operations, configured from your own models.

Pricing

	Forest	Adminmate
Free plan	Sandbox: 2 users, 2 datasources, 500 write events per month (hard cap)	Everything, unlimited users
Paid plans	Starter: 499/month for 7 users and 5,000 write events, then 60 per extra user	None
	Professional: 2,199/month for 25 users and 20,000 write events
	Enterprise: from 5,999/month

For a team of 10 people, Forest Starter costs around 679 per month (499 plus 3 extra users at 60), before any overage on write events. Adminmate is free.

Features

	Forest	Adminmate
Data explorer, CRUD, filters, search	✅	✅
Custom actions with forms	✅	✅
Segments	✅	✅
Dashboards and charts	✅	✅
Team-based permissions	✅ (advanced RBAC from Starter)	✅ (environments, models, fields, actions, segments)
Activity log and collaboration	✅	✅
Fintech workflows (KYC, AML, screening, cases)	✅	❌
Approval workflows, case inbox	✅	❌
SSO, 2FA	✅ (Starter and above)	❌
Backend languages	Node.js, Ruby, Python…	Node.js (Express)
Databases	SQL databases, MongoDB and more	MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MongoDB
Price	From 499/month	Free

When Forest is the better choice

• You are a regulated company and need ready-made compliance workflows with an audit trail.
• You need SSO, SCIM or a dedicated customer success manager.
• Your backend is not in Node.js.

When Adminmate is the better choice

• You need a solid back-office for support, ops and sales, not a compliance platform.
• Your backend runs on Node.js with Sequelize or Mongoose models.
• You want to give access to the whole team without counting seats or write events.
• You are a startup or a small team and don’t want a back-office to become one of your biggest software costs.

Migrating from Forest to Adminmate

If your Forest agent runs on Node.js, you already have what Adminmate needs: your Sequelize or Mongoose models. You can install Adminmate next to it, in the same Express app, and compare both on your real data before deciding. Your custom actions are plain JavaScript functions in both tools, so moving them is mostly a matter of adapting the handler signature.

Create your free Adminmate account and follow the installation guide.