Basiq vs Plaid

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 Live access needs a 12-month plan with an unpublished platform access fee, no SLA or security.txt was found, and the privacy policy says collected content may be kept indefinitely.

Plaid

Public OpenAPI file, llms.txt with about 250 entries and a Markdown twin of every docs page. No prices before a Production application, and Transactions, Liabilities and Investments bill per Item each month until removed.

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.

Plaid

1. Point calls at https://sandbox.plaid.com until you hold a Production secret; request shapes are the same
2. Create a sandbox Item with /sandbox/public_token/create and ins_109508, then /item/public_token/exchange, no Link UI needed
3. Use /transactions/sync with its cursor and back off on 429 RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED yourself, since no Retry-After comes back
4. Call /item/remove when the user is done, or subscription products keep billing
5. Send an idempotency_key on /transfer/authorization/create so a retried request can't authorise twice