Head to head · Bank account data · October 2026 research run

Basiq vs Flinks

Basiq scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against Flinks's 52.7 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Flinks leads on payments & pricing. Both do bank account data.

Best open banking and bank data APIs for AI agents · All 105 bank data comparisons

Which one, for what

Basiq C

Good for Consented bank data for Australia and New Zealand, with income and affordability reports for lenders.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 70 against 53
  • Agent ergonomics, 62 against 54
  • Security & auth, 55 against 50
  • Maintenance & community, 48 against 31
  • Transparency & trust, 72 against 60

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for

Live data needs a plan with a 12-month minimum and a platform access fee whose amount is not published

Flinks D

Good for A lender or fintech with steady volume that needs Canadian bank data, income and lending attributes, PDF statements or Canadian bank payments.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 25 against 20

Watch for

Live access needs a contract with a monthly minimum and a one-year term. The pricing page says there is no pay-as-you-go plan or self-serve trial

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runBasiqFlinksEdge
Reliability16%207053Basiq +17
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28483Basiq +1
Agent ergonomics13%16.26254Basiq +8
Security & auth14%17.55550Basiq +5
Payments & pricing10%12.52025Flinks +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.84831Basiq +17
Transparency & trust7%8.87260Basiq +12
Negative events≤1500
Total60.4 · C52.7 · D

Facts side by side

FactBasiqFlinks
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorBasiq Pty Ltd (Cuscal Limited)Flinks Technology Inc. (National Bank of Canada)
Hosted endpointhttps://au-api.basiq.iono (local only)
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingPaidPaid
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under the Basiq Terms of Service. The public docs repository carries no licence file, and the OpenAPI files state the licence as CommercialProprietary service under Flinks' Master Terms and Conditions. No open-source SDK or repository was found
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-302026-09-01
Terms last updatedno date given2023-08-03
Privacy policy last updatedno date given2022-09-22
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text

Verdicts

Basiq

Ten public OpenAPI files, an llms.txt index with Markdown twins and a free self-serve sandbox let an agent start on test data. Live access needs a 12-month plan with an unpublished platform access fee, no SLA or security.txt was found, and the privacy policy says collected content may be kept indefinitely.

Flinks

Ten public OpenAPI files, an llms.txt index with Markdown twins and published sandbox keys let an agent start without a signup. Live access needs a one-year contract from $500 a month, keys never expire, no rate-limit numbers are published, and the status page logged 77 incidents in 90 days.

Before you call either

Basiq

  1. Send the API key verbatim after Basic in the Authorization header of POST /token. Base64-encoding it returns a 400.
  2. Send basiq-version: 3.0 on the token request, cache the bearer token for its 60 minutes, and stay under 1,500 token requests per 5 minutes.
  3. Send the account holder through the hosted Consent UI in a browser with a CLIENT_ACCESS token bound to their userId. The API alone cannot create a first connection on version 3.0.
  4. Poll GET /jobs/{jobId} until verify-credentials, retrieve-accounts and retrieve-transactions all read success before reading accounts or transactions.
  5. Follow links.next on GET /users/{userId}/transactions. A page holds at most 500 items, and pending transactions get new ids on each refresh.

Flinks

  1. Call /GenerateAuthorizeToken with the secret key in flinks-auth-key, then pass the returned token to the Connect iframe or to /Authorize. The token is single-use and expires after 15 minutes.
  2. Send the account holder through Flinks Connect in a browser. The API alone cannot complete a first bank login, and sandbox iframes need demo=true.
  3. Store the loginId. Call /Authorize with it and MostRecentCached: true for a new requestId each session, because /GetAccountsDetail consumes the requestId.
  4. On a 202 from /GetAccountsDetail, poll /GetAccountsDetailAsync every 10 seconds for at most 30 minutes, or ask support to enable webhooks.
  5. Route each end user to the instance for their country. A loginId from the Canadian instance is not valid on the US one.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Basiq or Flinks?

Basiq scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against Flinks's 52.7 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Flinks leads on payments & pricing.

Do Basiq and Flinks need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Basiq and Flinks without installing anything?

Basiq has a hosted endpoint at https://au-api.basiq.io. No hosted endpoint is listed for Flinks.

Other comparisons with Basiq or Flinks

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