Head to head · Bank accounts · October 2026 research run
GoCardless Bank Account Data vs Tink
Tink scores 62.5 (B) on agent readiness against GoCardless Bank Account Data's 41.7 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do bank accounts.
Which one, for what
GoCardless Bank Account Data E
Good for Read-only account and transaction data across the UK and the EEA, for builders who don't need payments and can accept a contract.
No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.
Watch for
No public price and no confirmed free plan
Tink B
Good for A company with a contract that needs account, balance and transaction data or bank payments across European markets under Tink's own licences.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 62 against 44
- Schema & documentation, 73 against 54
- Agent ergonomics, 74 against 57
- Security & auth, 63 against 50
- Maintenance & community, 69 against 3
- Transparency & trust, 90 against 52
Watch for
No public prices. The pricing page lists Standard as Contact us and Enterprise as Custom pricing, and the FAQ says there is no pay-per-use option
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | GoCardless Bank Account Data | Tink | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 44 | 62 | Tink +18 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 54 | 73 | Tink +19 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 57 | 74 | Tink +17 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 50 | 63 | Tink +13 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 10 | 10 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 3 | 69 | Tink +66 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 52 | 90 | Tink +38 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 41.7 · E | 62.5 · B |
Facts side by side
| Fact | GoCardless Bank Account Data | Tink |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | GoCardless | Tink AB (Visa) |
| Hosted endpoint | https://bankaccountdata.gocardless.com/api/v2 | https://api.tink.com |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT (client libraries, unmaintained) | Proprietary service under Tink's Master Service Agreement. The Tink Link SDKs for iOS and Android on GitHub are MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2025-04-07 | 2026-09-15 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | |
| Popularity | 88 stars, 29k npm/wk, 4.3k PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | none |
Verdicts
GoCardless Bank Account Data
UK plus every PSD2 country, up to 24 months of history, one API shape for all of them. No public price and no confirmed free plan.
Tink
OAuth client credentials with per-endpoint scopes, token-paged data endpoints and a published MSA, DPA, SLA and sub-processor list. No price is public, live access needs a sales contract, and the API reference has no downloadable spec or published rate-limit numbers.
Before you call either
GoCardless Bank Account Data
- Cache the access token for its 24 hours and use /api/v2/token/refresh/ rather than minting a new pair each run
- Create the end user agreement before the requisition when you need other than 90 days of history or access
- Read the per-account rate limit headers; on 429 wait for the account reset time, since some banks allow 4 calls a day
- Poll /api/v2/accounts/{id}/ until status is READY before asking for transactions
- Call the REST endpoints directly; the Nordigen SDKs still install but get no fixes
Tink
- Request a client token at https://api.tink.com/api/v1/oauth/token, create a user, request an authorisation grant for that user, then exchange the code for a user token.
- Renew tokens on a timer. Client tokens last 30 minutes and user tokens two hours, and the client credentials flow returns no refresh token.
- Send the account holder through Tink Link in a browser. Bank consent cannot be completed by API calls alone.
- Read transactions from /data/v2/transactions with
pageSizeup to 100 and follownextPageToken. - Send an Idempotency-Key header on consent and payment writes. Keys are kept for 24 hours.
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, GoCardless Bank Account Data or Tink?
Tink scores 62.5 (B) on agent readiness against GoCardless Bank Account Data's 41.7 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.
Do GoCardless Bank Account Data and Tink need an API key?
GoCardless Bank Account Data needs an API key. Tink uses an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call GoCardless Bank Account Data and Tink without installing anything?
Yes. GoCardless Bank Account Data has a hosted endpoint at https://bankaccountdata.gocardless.com/api/v2 and Tink at https://api.tink.com.
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- GoCardless Bank Account Data vs TrueLayer
- GoCardless Bank Account Data vs Yapily
- Plaid vs Tink
- Salt Edge Account Information vs Tink
- Teller vs Tink
- Tink vs TrueLayer
- Tink vs Yapily
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/gocardless-bank-account-data-vs-tink.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/gocardless-bank-account-data.json·/api/v1/tools/tink.json - From a terminal
anchor compare gocardless-bank-account-data tink(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "gocardless-bank-account-data", "b": "tink"}at/mcp, no key