# Plaid vs Teller

> Plaid has a score of 70 (BB) against Teller's 43 (E). Both do bank accounts. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 75 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-teller
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-teller.md (~1,400 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-teller.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-teller.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

Plaid has a score of 70 (BB) against Teller's 43 (E). Both do bank accounts. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 75 points.

- Plaid: grade BB, 70/100, rank #103 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/plaid.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/plaid.json
- Teller: grade E, 43/100, rank #410 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/teller.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/teller.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Plaid for reliability (+45), schema & documentation (+49), security & auth (+18), maintenance & community (+75), transparency & trust (+36).

Pick Teller for payments & pricing (+25).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Plaid | Teller | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 68 | 23 | Plaid +45 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 93 | 44 | Plaid +49 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 82 | 80 | Plaid +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 67 | 49 | Plaid +18 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 15 | 40 | Teller +25 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 83 | 8 | Plaid +75 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 81 | 45 | Plaid +36 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **70 · BB** | **43 · E** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Plaid | Teller |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Plaid | Teller |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://production.plaid.com` | `https://api.teller.io` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio, Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | Token |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT (SDKs and MCP server) | ISC (Connect React wrapper, per package.json) |
| Tools exposed | 4 | 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 | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-24 | 2025-03-18 |
| Popularity | 586 stars, 1.3M npm/wk, 657k PyPI/wk | 10 stars |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 2/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Plaid.** Public OpenAPI file, llms.txt with about 250 entries and a Markdown twin of every docs page. No prices before a Production application, and Transactions, Liabilities and Investments bill per Item each month until removed.

**Teller.** Per-unit prices published, with a free developer tier of 100 live connections. US only.

## Before you call either

### Plaid

1. Point calls at https://sandbox.plaid.com until you hold a Production secret; request shapes are the same
2. Create a sandbox Item with /sandbox/public_token/create and ins_109508, then /item/public_token/exchange, no Link UI needed
3. Use /transactions/sync with its cursor and back off on 429 RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED yourself, since no Retry-After comes back
4. Call /item/remove when the user is done, or subscription products keep billing
5. Send an idempotency_key on `/transfer/authorization/create` so a retried request can't authorise twice

### Teller

1. In sandbox call https://api.teller.io/accounts with -u "$TELLER_ACCESS_TOKEN:" and no certificate; add the client certificate only for development and production
2. On a 404 `enrollment.disconnected.*` code, stop and send the user back through Teller Connect in update mode; retrying won't help
3. Pin the Teller-Version header so a dashboard upgrade doesn't change response shapes under you
4. Widen transaction syncs 7 to 10 days past the last sync to catch pending items that change date
5. Send an Idempotency-Key on every payment request; keys are kept for 72 hours

## Other comparisons with Plaid or Teller

- [Enable Banking vs Plaid](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/enable-banking-vs-plaid.md)
- [Enable Banking vs Teller](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/enable-banking-vs-teller.md)
- [GoCardless Bank Account Data vs Plaid](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gocardless-bank-account-data-vs-plaid.md)
- [GoCardless Bank Account Data vs Teller](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gocardless-bank-account-data-vs-teller.md)
- [Plaid vs Salt Edge Account Information](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-salt-edge.md)
- [Plaid vs TrueLayer](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-truelayer.md)
- [Plaid vs Yapily](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-yapily.md)
- [Salt Edge Account Information vs Teller](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/salt-edge-vs-teller.md)
- [Teller vs TrueLayer](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/teller-vs-truelayer.md)
- [Teller vs Yapily](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/teller-vs-yapily.md)