Head to head · Kyc screening · October 2026 research run
ComplyAdvantage vs Sumsub
Sumsub scores 68.5 (B) on agent readiness against ComplyAdvantage's 52.6 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. ComplyAdvantage leads on agent ergonomics. Both do kyc screening.
Which one, for what
Good for An agent that screens customers and companies against sanctions, politically exposed person and adverse media data, keeps them under monitoring and works the resulting alerts and cases.
Ahead on
- Agent ergonomics, 67 against 60
Watch for
No public status page or incident history was found. status.complyadvantage.com does not resolve
Sumsub B
Good for An agent that starts verifications, sends links, reads results and AML cases, and works case queues for a regulated business, with one token limited to those permissions.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 80 against 42
- Security & auth, 80 against 68
- Payments & pricing, 25 against 10
- Maintenance & community, 74 against 28
- Transparency & trust, 74 against 50
Watch for
No idempotency keys and no Retry-After or backoff guidance found in the reviewed documentation
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | ComplyAdvantage | Sumsub | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 42 | 80 | Sumsub +38 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 82 | 78 | ComplyAdvantage +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 67 | 60 | ComplyAdvantage +7 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 68 | 80 | Sumsub +12 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 10 | 25 | Sumsub +15 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 28 | 74 | Sumsub +46 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 50 | 74 | Sumsub +24 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 52.6 · D | 68.5 · B |
Facts side by side
| Fact | ComplyAdvantage | Sumsub |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | IVXS UK Limited (trading as ComplyAdvantage) | Sum and Substance Ltd |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.mesh.complyadvantage.com | https://api.sumsub.com |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Pay per use |
| Price for kyc screening | not published | $1.85 per transaction |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service. No service agreement is published, and the terms page on complyadvantage.com covers the website only | Proprietary service under Sumsub's terms and conditions. The agent skills repository and the @sumsub/websdk npm package are MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-16 | 2026-10-03 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-05-21 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-06-12 | 2026-03-19 |
| Customer content may train models | yes | |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | |
| Popularity | none | 172k npm/wk |
Verdicts
ComplyAdvantage
The Mesh API has a public OpenAPI 3.0.3 spec with 165 described operations, per-credential permissions and audit log endpoints, which suits an agent screening customers and working alerts. No status page, changelog, SDK, service agreement or subprocessor list was found in public, and access starts with a paid plan bought by a person.
Sumsub
Per-token permissions, an IP allowlist, HMAC-signed requests and a public OpenAPI spec with Markdown docs suit an agent working on verification cases. No idempotency keys or Retry-After guidance were found, there is no server SDK, and production access needs a browser signup, a bank card and Sumsub's review of the integration.
Before you call either
ComplyAdvantage
- Exchange the access key and secret at
POST /v3/tokenfor a bearer token. It lasts 24 hours and can't be refreshed, so request a new one before expiry - Ask for a credential with only the permissions the task needs. Permissions can't be edited later, and each reference page names the ones a call requires
- Create a screening configuration first and keep its
configuration_identifier. Creating and screening a customer needs it - Give each customer a unique external identifier. A concurrent request for the same identifier returns 409 with a pointer to the first workflow
- Read
Ratelimit-RemainingandRatelimit-Reseton every response. A 429 body is onlyAPI rate limit exceeded
Sumsub
- Sign every request. X-App-Access-Sig is the lowercase hex HMAC-SHA256 of timestamp, uppercase method, path with query and raw body, and the timestamp must be within one minute of server time
- Use a sandbox token (prefix sbx) for agent work. Sandbox and production tokens are separate, and Sumsub's own skills refuse any other prefix
- Stay under 300 GET and 50 POST requests per 5 seconds, and under 500 new applicants per 24 hours in Sandbox
- Token permissions can't be edited after creation. Generate a new token with the narrower set and delete the old one
- Subscribe to the applicantReviewed webhook for results and verify x-payload-digest against the raw body before trusting it
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, ComplyAdvantage or Sumsub?
Sumsub scores 68.5 (B) on agent readiness against ComplyAdvantage's 52.6 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. ComplyAdvantage leads on agent ergonomics.
Do ComplyAdvantage and Sumsub need an API key?
ComplyAdvantage uses an OAuth sign-in. Sumsub takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call ComplyAdvantage and Sumsub without installing anything?
Yes. ComplyAdvantage has a hosted endpoint at https://api.mesh.complyadvantage.com and Sumsub at https://api.sumsub.com.
Other comparisons with ComplyAdvantage or Sumsub
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/complyadvantage-vs-sumsub.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/complyadvantage.json·/api/v1/tools/sumsub.json - From a terminal
anchor compare complyadvantage sumsub(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "complyadvantage", "b": "sumsub"}at/mcp, no key