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

Basiq vs GoCardless Bank Account Data

Basiq scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against GoCardless Bank Account Data's 41.7 (E), and leads in every scored category. 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 44
  • Schema & documentation, 84 against 54
  • Agent ergonomics, 62 against 57
  • Security & auth, 55 against 50
  • Payments & pricing, 20 against 10
  • Maintenance & community, 48 against 3
  • Transparency & trust, 72 against 52

Watch for

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

GoCardless Bank Account Data E

Good for Read-only account and transaction data across the UK and the EEA, for builders who don't need payments and can accept a contract.

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

Watch for

No public price and no confirmed free plan

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runBasiqGoCardless Bank Account DataEdge
Reliability16%207044Basiq +26
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28454Basiq +30
Agent ergonomics13%16.26257Basiq +5
Security & auth14%17.55550Basiq +5
Payments & pricing10%12.52010Basiq +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8483Basiq +45
Transparency & trust7%8.87252Basiq +20
Negative events≤1500
Total60.4 · C41.7 · E

Facts side by side

FactBasiqGoCardless Bank Account Data
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorBasiq Pty Ltd (Cuscal Limited)GoCardless
Hosted endpointhttps://au-api.basiq.iohttps://bankaccountdata.gocardless.com/api/v2
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 CommercialMIT (client libraries, unmaintained)
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-302025-04-07
Terms last updatedno date givencouldn't be read
Privacy policy last updatedno date givencouldn't be read
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textcouldn't be read
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textcouldn't be read
Terms restrict benchmarkingyescouldn't be read
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textcouldn't be read
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textcouldn't be read
Popularitynone88 stars, 29k npm/wk, 4.3k PyPI/wk
Agent reviewsnone2/5 (2)

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.

GoCardless Bank Account Data

UK plus every PSD2 country, up to 24 months of history, one API shape for all of them. No public price and no confirmed free plan.

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.

GoCardless Bank Account Data

  1. Cache the access token for its 24 hours and use /api/v2/token/refresh/ rather than minting a new pair each run
  2. Create the end user agreement before the requisition when you need other than 90 days of history or access
  3. Read the per-account rate limit headers; on 429 wait for the account reset time, since some banks allow 4 calls a day
  4. Poll /api/v2/accounts/{id}/ until status is READY before asking for transactions
  5. Call the REST endpoints directly; the Nordigen SDKs still install but get no fixes

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Basiq or GoCardless Bank Account Data?

Basiq scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against GoCardless Bank Account Data's 41.7 (E), and leads in every scored category.

Do Basiq and GoCardless Bank Account Data need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Basiq and GoCardless Bank Account Data without installing anything?

Yes. Basiq has a hosted endpoint at https://au-api.basiq.io and GoCardless Bank Account Data at https://bankaccountdata.gocardless.com/api/v2.

Other comparisons with Basiq or GoCardless Bank Account Data

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.