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
| Category | Weight this run | Alloy | Sumsub | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 59 | 80 | Sumsub +21 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 73 | 78 | Sumsub +5 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 52 | 60 | Sumsub +8 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 49 | 80 | Sumsub +31 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 0 | 25 | Sumsub +25 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 72 | 74 | Sumsub +2 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 62 | 74 | Sumsub +12 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | D 52.4/100 | B 68.5/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Alloy | Sumsub |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | First Mile Group, Inc. (Alloy) | Sum and Substance Ltd |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://api.sumsub.com |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Alloy's terms of service. The @alloyidentity/web-sdk capture package is MIT | Proprietary service under Sumsub's terms and conditions. The agent skills repository and the @sumsub/websdk npm package are MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-05 | 2026-10-03 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-03-12 | 2026-05-21 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-03-19 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | yes |
| Popularity | 21k npm/wk | 172k 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
- 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
- Use unique, prefixed external IDs in sandbox. Sandbox and Production share one data store
- Read
alloy-ratelimit-remaining, and on 429 or 5xx wait forretry-afterwith exponential backoff and jitter - Expect
runningafter about 25 seconds on journey applications and wait for the webhook instead of resubmitting - Send the workflow header with account-level keys, since inputs depend on the workflow configured
Sumsub
- 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
- Use a sandbox token (prefix sbx) for agent work. Sandbox and production tokens are separate, and Sumsub's own skills refuse any other prefix
- Stay under 300 GET and 50 POST requests per 5 seconds, and under 500 new applicants per 24 hours in Sandbox
- Token permissions can't be edited after creation. Generate a new token with the narrower set and delete the old one
- 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
- Alloy vs ComplyCube
- Alloy vs Didit
- Alloy vs Entrust Identity Verification (formerly Onfido)
- Alloy vs Jumio
- Alloy vs Middesk
- Alloy vs Persona
- Alloy vs Plaid Identity Verification
- Alloy vs Shufti
- Alloy vs Socure RiskOS
- Alloy vs Stripe Identity
- Alloy vs Trulioo
- Alloy vs Veriff
- Alloy vs Vouched
- ComplyCube vs Sumsub
- Didit vs Sumsub
- Entrust Identity Verification (formerly Onfido) vs Sumsub
- Jumio vs Sumsub
- Persona vs Sumsub
- Plaid Identity Verification vs Sumsub
- Shufti vs Sumsub
- Socure RiskOS vs Sumsub
- Stripe Identity vs Sumsub
- Sumsub vs Trulioo
- Sumsub vs Veriff
- Sumsub vs Vouched
- Alloy vs ComplyAdvantage
- ComplyAdvantage vs Sumsub
- Middesk vs Sumsub
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/alloy-vs-sumsub.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/alloy.json·/api/v1/tools/sumsub.json - From a terminal
anchor compare alloy sumsub(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "alloy", "b": "sumsub"}at/mcp, no key