Head to head · Kyc identity · October 2026 research run
Jumio vs Middesk
Middesk scores 59 (C) on agent readiness against Jumio's 55 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Jumio leads on security & auth and maintenance & community. Both do kyc identity.
Which one, for what
Jumio C
Good for An enterprise with a Jumio contract that wants document, selfie and liveness checks, watchlist screening and Latin American, Thai and Australian database checks behind OpenAPI-described endpoints.
Ahead on
- Security & auth, 63 against 56
- Maintenance & community, 75 against 64
Watch for
No public price, free tier or trial. OAuth2 and workflow keys are activated by a Jumio account manager
Middesk C
Good for An agent onboarding or re-checking US businesses for a bank, lender or marketplace that already holds a Middesk contract, with registry, TIN, sanctions and lien data in one object.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 73 against 65
- Schema & documentation, 82 against 73
- Agent ergonomics, 56 against 45
- Payments & pricing, 10 against 0
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
Watch for
No public price. Fees are set in an order form, and every docs page ends with a prompt to contact sales
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Jumio | Middesk | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 65 | 73 | Middesk +8 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 73 | 82 | Middesk +9 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 45 | 56 | Middesk +11 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 63 | 56 | Jumio +7 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 0 | 10 | Middesk +10 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 75 | 64 | Jumio +11 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 60 | 61 | Middesk +1 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 55 · C | 59 · C |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Jumio | Middesk |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Jumio Corporation | Middesk, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://api.middesk.com/v1 |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service. No public service agreement was found. The @jumio/websdk npm package is marked UNLICENSED | Proprietary service under Middesk's Business Verification Terms and Conditions. The Claude Code and Codex plugins on GitHub are MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 11 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-10-05 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-08-04 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | yes | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | |
| Popularity | 72 stars, 2.1k npm/wk | 2 stars |
Verdicts
Jumio
Five OpenAPI 3.0 files, an llms.txt index and OAuth2 clients limited to initiating or to retrieving and deleting make the API readable and containable. Access starts with an account manager, with no public price, trial or service agreement, and the status page shows four processing degradations and a 35-minute Singapore outage between 14 August and 2 October 2026.
Middesk
A public OpenAPI 3.1 contract for 87 operations, llms.txt, Markdown docs and a dated weekly changelog make the REST API readable to an agent, and OAuth has a read-only scope. Access is sales-led. No price, self-serve signup or official SDK was found, and the hosted MCP server rejects sandbox keys.
Before you call either
Jumio
- Use the host for the tenant's region (amer-1, emea-1 or apac-1). Tokens come from auth.<region>.jumio.ai/oauth2/token with the client ID and secret as Basic credentials
- Reuse the bearer token for its 60 minutes. Token requests are limited to 10 a second and new transactions to 1 a second per tenant
- Send a User-Agent header on every call. The Account API marks it required
- Don't blindly retry POST /api/v1/accounts. Each call creates an account and a transaction, and no idempotency key exists
- Wait for the callback or poll the status endpoint until PROCESSED before retrieving. Jumio's retry schedule starts at 40 seconds and stops after 940
Middesk
- Match the key to the host.
mk_testkeys work only at https://api-sandbox.middesk.com/v1 andmk_livekeys only at https://api.middesk.com/v1 - Name the
ordersonPOST /v1/businesses. Omitting them places a verification order plus every package the account runs automatically, all billed - Send
address_line1andaddress_line2. The API ignoresaddress_line_1without an error - A 201 means the business was created, not verified. Wait for the
business.updatedwebhook or poll untilstatusleavespending - Stay under 20 requests a second per account, and in sandbox wait the seconds in
Retry-Afterafter a 429 on business creation
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Jumio or Middesk?
Middesk scores 59 (C) on agent readiness against Jumio's 55 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Jumio leads on security & auth and maintenance & community.
Do Jumio and Middesk need an API key?
Jumio uses an OAuth sign-in. Middesk takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call Jumio and Middesk without installing anything?
No hosted endpoint is listed for Jumio. Middesk has a hosted endpoint at https://api.middesk.com/v1.
Other comparisons with Jumio or Middesk
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/jumio-vs-middesk.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/jumio.json·/api/v1/tools/middesk.json - From a terminal
anchor compare jumio middesk(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "jumio", "b": "middesk"}at/mcp, no key