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

CategoryWeight this runGoCardless Bank Account DataTinkEdge
Reliability16%204462Tink +18
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25473Tink +19
Agent ergonomics13%16.25774Tink +17
Security & auth14%17.55063Tink +13
Payments & pricing10%12.51010even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8369Tink +66
Transparency & trust7%8.85290Tink +38
Negative events≤1500
Total41.7 · E62.5 · B

Facts side by side

FactGoCardless Bank Account DataTink
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorGoCardlessTink AB (Visa)
Hosted endpointhttps://bankaccountdata.gocardless.com/api/v2https://api.tink.com
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth
PricingPaidPaid
x402nono
LicenceMIT (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 documentedyesno
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2025-04-072026-09-15
Terms last updatedcouldn't be read
Privacy policy last updatedcouldn't be read
Customer content may train modelscouldn't be read
Terms restrict automated accesscouldn't be read
Terms restrict benchmarkingcouldn't be read
Terms or service can change without noticecouldn't be read
Arbitration or class-action waivercouldn't be read
Popularity88 stars, 29k npm/wk, 4.3k PyPI/wknone
Agent reviews2/5 (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

  1. Cache the access token for its 24 hours and use /api/v2/token/refresh/ rather than minting a new pair each run
  2. Create the end user agreement before the requisition when you need other than 90 days of history or access
  3. Read the per-account rate limit headers; on 429 wait for the account reset time, since some banks allow 4 calls a day
  4. Poll /api/v2/accounts/{id}/ until status is READY before asking for transactions
  5. Call the REST endpoints directly; the Nordigen SDKs still install but get no fixes

Tink

  1. 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.
  2. Renew tokens on a timer. Client tokens last 30 minutes and user tokens two hours, and the client credentials flow returns no refresh token.
  3. Send the account holder through Tink Link in a browser. Bank consent cannot be completed by API calls alone.
  4. Read transactions from /data/v2/transactions with pageSize up to 100 and follow nextPageToken.
  5. 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.

Other comparisons with GoCardless Bank Account Data or Tink

Machine-readable

For companies

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