Flinks vs Plaid

Flinks

Ten public OpenAPI files, an llms.txt index with Markdown twins and published sandbox keys let an agent start without a signup. Live access needs a one-year contract from $500 a month, keys never expire, no rate-limit numbers are published, and the status page logged 77 incidents in 90 days.

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.

Flinks

1. Call /GenerateAuthorizeToken with the secret key in flinks-auth-key, then pass the returned token to the Connect iframe or to /Authorize. The token is single-use and expires after 15 minutes.
2. Send the account holder through Flinks Connect in a browser. The API alone cannot complete a first bank login, and sandbox iframes need demo=true.
3. Store the loginId. Call /Authorize with it and MostRecentCached: true for a new requestId each session, because /GetAccountsDetail consumes the requestId.
4. On a 202 from /GetAccountsDetail, poll /GetAccountsDetailAsync every 10 seconds for at most 30 minutes, or ask support to enable webhooks.
5. Route each end user to the instance for their country. A loginId from the Canadian instance is not valid on the US one.

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