Head to head · Payroll employees · October 2026 research run
Check vs Finch
Finch scores 71.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Check's 67.5 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Check leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth. Both do payroll employees.
Which one, for what
Check B
Good for A software platform that wants to sell US payroll inside its own product and can sign a partnership, with Check handling tax calculation, money movement and filings.
Ahead on
- Agent ergonomics, 83 against 71
- Security & auth, 74 against 66
Watch for
No public price and no self-serve signup. The documentation says to request an API key through Check's sales contact
Finch BB
Good for An application that needs to read employees, pay runs and pay statements from whatever payroll or HR system an employer already uses, or to write benefit deductions back.
Ahead on
- Schema & documentation, 87 against 78
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 5
- Maintenance & community, 84 against 72
- Transparency & trust, 74 against 62
Also in its favour
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- Runs on your own machine
Watch for
Finch cannot create, preview or approve a payroll. Writes are limited to deductions and contributions, on Pro and Premier plans
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Check | Finch | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 80 | 84 | Finch +4 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 78 | 87 | Finch +9 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 83 | 71 | Check +12 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 74 | 66 | Check +8 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 5 | 30 | Finch +25 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 72 | 84 | Finch +12 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 62 | 74 | Finch +12 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 67.5 · B | 71.6 · BB |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Check | Finch |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Check Technologies, Inc. | Profound Platform Inc. (dba Finch) |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.checkhq.com | https://api.tryfinch.com |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Check's terms of service and partner agreement. The MCP server and CLI on GitHub are MIT | Proprietary service under Finch's Master Service Agreement. The SDKs and the MCP server on GitHub are Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | none | 2 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-07 | 2026-10-05 |
| Terms last updated | 2021-09-03 | 2026-08-07 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2024-04-18 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 18 stars | 16k npm/wk, 26k PyPI/wk |
Verdicts
Check
Graded as embedded payroll through a partner API key, not access to an existing employer's payroll account. The API has idempotency keys on writes, a required preview before approval and queryable request logs. No price is public, a sandbox key comes through Check's sales team, and one API key carries the whole partner account.
Finch
Graded on the REST API. An employer grants each connection named product permissions, and limits, error codes and a 99.9 per cent uptime SLA are published. Finch reads payroll and writes deductions but cannot run a payroll. Access tokens never expire, no idempotency keys were found, and writes and most providers need a sales-led plan.
Before you call either
Check
- Use https://sandbox.checkhq.com with the sandbox key and https://api.checkhq.com with the production key. A key is not valid across environments
- Preview a payroll before approving it, then pass
preview_started_atto POST /payrolls/{id}/approve so a stale preview fails with 409 - Send
X-Idempotency-Keyon every write. Keys expire after 24 hours, so list the resource before retrying later than that - On 429 wait for
Retry-After. The limit is 10 requests a second in sandbox and for partners paying fewer than 1,000 payees a month, with 100 concurrent requests - Connect the MCP server with
?read_only=trueorX-MCP-Readonly: trueunless writes are intended. In production, approving a payroll moves money
Finch
- Send
Finch-API-Version: 2020-09-17andAuthorization: Bearer <access_token>on every request. A request without the version header fails with 400 - Call GET /introspect first to see the connection's products, status and whether it is automated or assisted before choosing endpoints
- Treat a 202 response as data not ready, not as data. Retry with backoff, and expect up to 14 days for an assisted connection's first sync
- Stay under 20 requests a minute on organisation endpoints and 12 on pay endpoints across all tokens. Batch IDs, and on 429 wait 60 seconds
- After a deduction write, poll the job by
job_iduntil it completes before enrolling individuals. Enrolment overwrites an existing enrolment - Start the MCP server with
--code-allow-http-getsor a token without the benefits product when only reads are intended
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Check or Finch?
Finch scores 71.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Check's 67.5 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Check leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth.
Do Check and Finch need an API key?
Check takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Finch uses an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call Check and Finch without installing anything?
Yes. Check has a hosted endpoint at https://api.checkhq.com and Finch at https://api.tryfinch.com.
Other comparisons with Check or Finch
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/check-payroll-vs-finch.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/check-payroll.json·/api/v1/tools/finch.json - From a terminal
anchor compare check-payroll finch(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "check-payroll", "b": "finch"}at/mcp, no key