# Finch vs Zeal (slim)

> Finch scores 71.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Zeal's 45.4 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do payroll employees. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/finch-vs-zeal.md (~2,200 tokens) · this version ~680 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/finch-vs-zeal.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/finch-vs-zeal
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

Finch scores 71.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Zeal's 45.4 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do payroll employees.

- Finch: BB 71.6, rank #104 of 722 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/finch.min.md
- Zeal: E 45.4, rank #658 of 722 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/zeal.min.md
- Finch, 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 Reliability, 84 against 42; Schema & documentation, 87 against 68; Agent ergonomics, 71 against 63; Security & auth, 66 against 34; Payments & pricing, 30 against 0; Maintenance & community, 84 against 61; Transparency & trust, 74 against 51. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; Runs on your own machine.
- Zeal, good for A US staffing platform, marketplace or workforce product that will sign a partnership and run payroll for many employers under its own brand, including daily and on-demand pay.

| Category | Finch | Zeal |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 84 | 42 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 87 | 68 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 71 | 63 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 66 | 34 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 30 | 0 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 84 | 61 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 74 | 51 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Finch | Zeal |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Profound Platform Inc. (dba Finch) | Puzzl Group Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.tryfinch.com` | `https://api.zeal.com` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | API key |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Finch's Master Service Agreement. The SDKs and the MCP server on GitHub are Apache-2.0 | Proprietary service. The npm SDK declares MIT. The SDK repositories on GitHub carry no licence file |
| Tools exposed | 2 | none |
| Last release | 2026-10-05 | 2026-07-31 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-07 | 2026-01-16 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-01-16 |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 16k npm/wk, 26k PyPI/wk | 0 stars, 8 npm/wk |