Head to head · Bank accounts · October 2026 research run
GoCardless Bank Account Data vs TrueLayer
TrueLayer has a score of 62.4 (B) against GoCardless Bank Account Data's 41.9 (E). Both do bank accounts. The largest gap is schema & documentation, 35 points.
Which one, for what
Pick GoCardless Bank Account Data for
No category where it leads by five points or more.
Pick TrueLayer for
- reliability (+27)
- schema & documentation (+35)
- agent ergonomics (+16)
- security & auth (+16)
- maintenance & community (+35)
- transparency & trust (+11)
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | GoCardless Bank Account Data | TrueLayer | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 44 | 71 | TrueLayer +27 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 54 | 89 | TrueLayer +35 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 57 | 73 | TrueLayer +16 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 50 | 66 | TrueLayer +16 |
| 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 | 38 | TrueLayer +35 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 55 | 66 | TrueLayer +11 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 41.9 · E | 62.4 · B |
Facts side by side
| Fact | GoCardless Bank Account Data | TrueLayer |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | GoCardless | TrueLayer |
| Hosted endpoint | https://bankaccountdata.gocardless.com/api/v2 | https://api.truelayer.com |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT (client libraries, unmaintained) | Apache-2.0 or MIT (signing libraries) |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2025-04-07 | 2026-06-25 |
| Popularity | 88 stars, 29k npm/wk, 4.3k PyPI/wk | 23 stars, 17k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | 3/5 (2) |
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.
TrueLayer
FCA and Central Bank of Ireland authorised, holding the AISP and PISP licences itself. No public pricing anywhere on the site or in the docs.
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
TrueLayer
- Use auth.truelayer-sandbox.com and api.truelayer-sandbox.com with a separate sandbox client; live credentials don't work there
- Send the user's IP when they're present, or a bank allows 4 calls a day per account
- Check the retry column of the Data API error table before retrying; codes marked No need the user or a config fix
- Set data_access_type to one_time for a single read and skip the 90-day reauthorisation
- Append .md to any docs URL to get the page as Markdown
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