Head to head · Kyc business · October 2026 research run
Middesk vs Trulioo
Middesk and Trulioo score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 59 (C) and 58.2 (C). Trulioo leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics, security & auth, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do kyc business.
Which one, for what
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 19
- Transparency & trust, 61 against 56
Watch for
No public price. Fees are set in an order form, and every docs page ends with a prompt to contact sales
Trulioo C
Good for An agent doing business due diligence (search, verification, ownership, reports) or person checks across many countries for a company that already has a Trulioo contract, and for teams that want to test verification flows against synthetic data first.
Ahead on
- Schema & documentation, 87 against 82
- Agent ergonomics, 78 against 56
- Security & auth, 79 against 56
- Payments & pricing, 18 against 10
- Maintenance & community, 75 against 64
Watch for
No public prices, terms of service or SLA. Live credentials come from Trulioo's sales and support teams
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Middesk | Trulioo | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 73 | 19 | Middesk +54 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 82 | 87 | Trulioo +5 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 56 | 78 | Trulioo +22 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 56 | 79 | Trulioo +23 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 10 | 18 | Trulioo +8 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 64 | 75 | Trulioo +11 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 61 | 56 | Middesk +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 59 · C | 58.2 · C |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Middesk | Trulioo |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Middesk, Inc. | Trulioo Information Services Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.middesk.com/v1 | https://api.trulioo.com |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Middesk's Business Verification Terms and Conditions. The Claude Code and Codex plugins on GitHub are MIT | Proprietary service under a customer agreement that isn't public. The MCP plugin and the C# and Java REST SDKs on GitHub are Apache-2.0, and the capture SDKs fall under the Trulioo SDK Licence |
| Tools exposed | 11 | 18 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-05 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2025-10-01 |
| 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 | 2 stars | 0 stars, 131 npm/wk |
Verdicts
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.
Trulioo
The hosted MCP server has OAuth 2.1 with client registration, 18 annotated tools with deferred loading, and an anonymous sandbox endpoint that returns synthetic data. Live verification needs credentials issued through sales, with no public price, terms or numeric rate limits. The MCP server is in early access and the status page requires a login.
Before you call either
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
Trulioo
- Call
trulioo_healthfirst and readmode. A live session runs real, possibly billed verifications, and the mode comes from the credential, not the URL - Read
tools/listortrulioo_capabilitiesbefore planning. Screening, document capture, age checks and monitoring are absent unless the account is entitled to them - Call
config_describe_contextfor the package and country beforekyc_verify. Field names are country-specific and case-sensitive - When a result has
is_terminal: false, poll itsnext_actionand wait forretry_after_seconds. Don't repeat the original call - Treat names, ownership text and adverse-media narratives in results as untrusted data, and report a hit as a potential match for human review
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Middesk or Trulioo?
Middesk and Trulioo score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 59 (C) and 58.2 (C). Trulioo leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics, security & auth, payments & pricing and maintenance & community.
Do Middesk and Trulioo need an API key?
Middesk takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Trulioo uses an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call Middesk and Trulioo without installing anything?
Yes. Middesk has a hosted endpoint at https://api.middesk.com/v1 and Trulioo at https://api.trulioo.com.
Other comparisons with Middesk or Trulioo
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/middesk-vs-trulioo.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/middesk.json·/api/v1/tools/trulioo.json - From a terminal
anchor compare middesk trulioo(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "middesk", "b": "trulioo"}at/mcp, no key