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

Basiq vs Powens

Basiq scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against Powens's 42.6 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Powens leads on security & auth. 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 27
  • Schema & documentation, 84 against 48
  • Agent ergonomics, 62 against 57
  • Payments & pricing, 20 against 10
  • Maintenance & community, 48 against 33
  • Transparency & trust, 72 against 63

Watch for

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

Powens E

Good for A European product, strongest in France, that needs account and transaction data plus wealth, loan and document data under Powens' own licence.

Ahead on

  • Security & auth, 60 against 55

Watch for

No OpenAPI or other machine-readable contract was found. The reference is hand-written tables

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runBasiqPowensEdge
Reliability16%207027Basiq +43
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28448Basiq +36
Agent ergonomics13%16.26257Basiq +5
Security & auth14%17.55560Powens +5
Payments & pricing10%12.52010Basiq +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.84833Basiq +15
Transparency & trust7%8.87263Basiq +9
Negative events≤1500
Total60.4 · C42.6 · E

Facts side by side

FactBasiqPowens
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorBasiq Pty Ltd (Cuscal Limited)Powens SAS
Hosted endpointhttps://au-api.basiq.iohttps://{domain}.biapi.pro/2.0
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or 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 Powens' General Terms and Conditions of Sale. The Powens Connect iOS SDK on GitHub is LGPL-3.0
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-30none
Terms last updatedno date givenno date given
Privacy policy last updatedno date givenno date given
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 textnot found in the text
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.

Powens

Powens documents a REST API with Markdown docs, cursor pagination, date filters and a hard-delete call for connections, under a French payment institution licence. No OpenAPI file, public price, status page, idempotency key or server SDK was found, and live access needs a signed purchase order.

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.

Powens

  1. Ask the owner for the domain name, client ID and client secret from the console. Every call goes to https://{domain}.biapi.pro/2.0
  2. Send limit on every transactions list. It is required, at most 1,000, and the next page comes from _links.next.href used as given
  3. Enable an account with POST and {"disabled": false} only after the account holder consents. Accounts arrive disabled with no transactions
  4. Store the permanent user token as a secret. It does not expire, and the default webhook sends it in the Authorization header
  5. Stay under 30 calls a minute in the sandbox and use webhooks in place of polling, as the fair usage policy asks

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Basiq or Powens?

Basiq scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against Powens's 42.6 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Powens leads on security & auth.

Do Basiq and Powens need an API key?

Basiq needs an API key. Powens takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Basiq and Powens without installing anything?

Yes. Basiq has a hosted endpoint at https://au-api.basiq.io and Powens at https://{domain}.biapi.pro/2.0.

Other comparisons with Basiq or Powens

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