Head to head · Identity verification · October 2026 research run

Alloy vs Sumsub

Sumsub scores 68.5 (B) on agent readiness against Alloy's 52.4 (D), and leads in every scored category. Both do identity verification.

Best identity and business verification APIs for AI agents · All 119 verification comparisons

Which one, for what

Alloy D

Best for Banks and fintechs that already run onboarding through Alloy and want an agent to submit journey applications, read decisions and work investigations.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

No public prices, trial or self-serve sign-up. Access starts with a demo request

Sumsub B

Best for An agent that starts verifications, sends links, reads results and AML cases, and works case queues for a regulated business, with one token limited to those permissions.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 80 against 59
  • Schema & documentation, 78 against 73
  • Agent ergonomics, 60 against 52
  • Security & auth, 80 against 49
  • Payments & pricing, 25 against 0
  • Transparency & trust, 74 against 62

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for

No idempotency keys and no Retry-After or backoff guidance found in the reviewed documentation

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAlloySumsubEdge
Reliability16%205980Sumsub +21
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27378Sumsub +5
Agent ergonomics13%16.25260Sumsub +8
Security & auth14%17.54980Sumsub +31
Payments & pricing10%12.5025Sumsub +25
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87274Sumsub +2
Transparency & trust7%8.86274Sumsub +12
Negative events≤1500
TotalD 52.4/100B 68.5/100

Facts side by side

FactAlloySumsub
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorFirst Mile Group, Inc. (Alloy)Sum and Substance Ltd
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.sumsub.com
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingPaidPay per use
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Alloy's terms of service. The @alloyidentity/web-sdk capture package is MITProprietary service under Sumsub's terms and conditions. The agent skills repository and the @sumsub/websdk npm package are MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-052026-10-03
Terms last updated2026-03-122026-05-21
Privacy policy last updatedno date given2026-03-19
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesyes
Popularity21k npm/wk172k npm/wk

Verdicts

Alloy

Alloy's public docs cover journeys, evaluations, entities, documents, cases and investigations, with llms.txt, Markdown pages, OpenAPI fragments and rate-limit headers with retry-after. Access is sales-led with no public price or trial, credentials have no scopes, there is no idempotency key or server SDK, and inputs vary by each customer's workflow.

Sumsub

Per-token permissions, an IP allowlist, HMAC-signed requests and a public OpenAPI spec with Markdown docs suit an agent working on verification cases. No idempotency keys or Retry-After guidance were found, there is no server SDK, and production access needs a browser signup, a bank card and Sumsub's review of the integration.

Before you call either

Alloy

  1. Get the account's base URL from the customer. Defaults are api.alloy.co and sandbox.alloy.co, and some accounts have their own hosts
  2. Use unique, prefixed external IDs in sandbox. Sandbox and Production share one data store
  3. Read alloy-ratelimit-remaining, and on 429 or 5xx wait for retry-after with exponential backoff and jitter
  4. Expect running after about 25 seconds on journey applications and wait for the webhook instead of resubmitting
  5. Send the workflow header with account-level keys, since inputs depend on the workflow configured

Sumsub

  1. Sign every request. X-App-Access-Sig is the lowercase hex HMAC-SHA256 of timestamp, uppercase method, path with query and raw body, and the timestamp must be within one minute of server time
  2. Use a sandbox token (prefix sbx) for agent work. Sandbox and production tokens are separate, and Sumsub's own skills refuse any other prefix
  3. Stay under 300 GET and 50 POST requests per 5 seconds, and under 500 new applicants per 24 hours in Sandbox
  4. Token permissions can't be edited after creation. Generate a new token with the narrower set and delete the old one
  5. Subscribe to the applicantReviewed webhook for results and verify x-payload-digest against the raw body before trusting it

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Alloy or Sumsub?

Sumsub scores 68.5 (B) on agent readiness against Alloy's 52.4 (D), and leads in every scored category.

Do Alloy and Sumsub need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Alloy and Sumsub without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Alloy. Sumsub has a hosted endpoint at https://api.sumsub.com.

Other comparisons with Alloy or Sumsub

Machine-readable

For companies

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