# Belvo vs Plaid

> Plaid scores 69.8 (B) on agent readiness against Belvo's 63.5 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Belvo leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do bank accounts. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/belvo-vs-plaid
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/belvo-vs-plaid.md (~2,250 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/belvo-vs-plaid.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/belvo-vs-plaid.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-08

Plaid scores 69.8 (B) on agent readiness against Belvo's 63.5 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Belvo leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do bank accounts.

- Belvo: grade B, 63.5/100, rank #309 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/belvo.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/belvo.json
- Plaid: grade B, 69.8/100, rank #147 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/plaid.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/plaid.json

## Which one, for what

### Belvo (B)

Good for: Lenders and fintechs that need consented bank data in Brazil, employment or tax records in Mexico, or Pix and direct debit collection, and can sign a contract.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 84 against 68
- Payments & pricing, 20 against 15

Watch for: Production keys follow a sales meeting, a certification call with a Belvo engineer and a paid plan from 1,000 USD a month

### Plaid (B)

Good for: US and Canadian account, transaction, identity and income data, with Transfer for payments.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 93 against 80
- Security & auth, 67 against 57
- Maintenance & community, 83 against 30
- Transparency & trust, 79 against 64

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source

Watch for: No prices before a Production application, and Transactions, Liabilities and Investments bill per Item each month until removed


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Belvo | Plaid | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 84 | 68 | Belvo +16 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 93 | Plaid +13 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 82 | Plaid +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 57 | 67 | Plaid +10 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 15 | Belvo +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 30 | 83 | Plaid +53 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 64 | 79 | Plaid +15 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63.5 · B** | **69.8 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Belvo | Plaid |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Belvo | Plaid |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.belvo.com` | `https://production.plaid.com` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, stdio, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Belvo's General Conditions of Service Usage. The belvo npm package (0.28.0) is MIT | MIT (SDKs and MCP server) |
| Tools exposed | none | 4 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-08-10 | 2026-09-24 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-01-10 | 2025-12-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2021-02-22 | 2025-12-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 1.1k npm/wk, 240 PyPI/wk | 586 stars, 1.3M npm/wk, 657k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Belvo.** Belvo publishes a 146-operation OpenAPI file, an llms.txt with a Markdown twin of each docs page, and list endpoints with field selection and pages of up to 1,000. Production access needs a sales meeting, a certification call and a paid plan from 1,000 USD a month, and no changelog or maintained SDK was found.

**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.

## Before you call either

### Belvo

1. Send HTTP Basic with `secretId` as username and `secretPassword` as password to https://sandbox.belvo.com, and switch to https://api.belvo.com only with production keys
2. Create links through the Hosted Widget with a token from POST /api/token/, which expires after 10 minutes
3. Read stored data with GET list calls. Each POST retrieval in Brazil counts against monthly Open Finance limits, such as 8 a month per CPF for owners and accounts
4. Retry 50x responses up to five times from a 3 second base with a factor of two, and don't retry 40x apart from `too_many_sessions`
5. Send `Belvo-Idempotency-Key` with a UUID when creating a payment intent, and `X-Belvo-Request-Mode: async` on link deletion to avoid the limit of 5 deletions a minute

### 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

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Belvo or Plaid?

Plaid scores 69.8 (B) on agent readiness against Belvo's 63.5 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Belvo leads on reliability and payments & pricing.

### Do Belvo and Plaid need an API key?

Belvo needs an API key. Plaid takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Belvo and Plaid without installing anything?

Yes. Belvo has a hosted endpoint at https://api.belvo.com and Plaid at https://production.plaid.com.

### Are Belvo and Plaid open source?

No open-source release is listed for Belvo. Plaid is open source (MIT (SDKs and MCP server)).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/belvo-vs-plaid.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/belvo-vs-plaid.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "belvo", "b": "plaid"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare belvo plaid`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/belvo.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/plaid.json

## Other comparisons with Belvo or Plaid

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- [Akoya vs Plaid](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/akoya-vs-plaid.md)
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- [Enable Banking vs Plaid](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/enable-banking-vs-plaid.md)
- [Flinks vs Plaid](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/flinks-vs-plaid.md)
- [GoCardless Bank Account Data vs Plaid](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gocardless-bank-account-data-vs-plaid.md)
- [MX Platform API vs Plaid](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mx-vs-plaid.md)
- [Plaid vs Salt Edge Account Information](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-salt-edge.md)
- [Plaid vs Teller](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-teller.md)
- [Plaid vs Tink](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-tink.md)
- [Plaid vs TrueLayer](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-truelayer.md)
- [Plaid vs Yapily](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-yapily.md)