# Plaid vs Tink

> Plaid scores 69.8 (B) on agent readiness against Tink's 62.5 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Tink leads on transparency & trust. Both do bank accounts. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-tink
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-tink.md (~2,150 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-tink.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-tink.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: 2026-10-08

Plaid scores 69.8 (B) on agent readiness against Tink's 62.5 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Tink leads on transparency & trust. Both do bank accounts.

- Plaid: grade B, 69.8/100, rank #147 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/plaid.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/plaid.json
- Tink: grade B, 62.5/100, rank #337 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/tink.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/tink.json

## Which one, for what

### Plaid (B)

Good for: US and Canadian account, transaction, identity and income data, with Transfer for payments.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 68 against 62
- Schema & documentation, 93 against 73
- Agent ergonomics, 82 against 74
- Payments & pricing, 15 against 10
- Maintenance & community, 83 against 69

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source

Watch for: No prices before a Production application, and Transactions, Liabilities and Investments bill per Item each month until removed

### 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:
- Transparency & trust, 90 against 79

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

| Category | Weight | Plaid | Tink | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 68 | 62 | Plaid +6 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 93 | 73 | Plaid +20 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 82 | 74 | Plaid +8 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 67 | 63 | Plaid +4 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 15 | 10 | Plaid +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 83 | 69 | Plaid +14 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 79 | 90 | Tink +11 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **69.8 · B** | **62.5 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Plaid | Tink |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Plaid | Tink AB (Visa) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://production.plaid.com` | `https://api.tink.com` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio, Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT (SDKs and MCP server) | Proprietary service under Tink's Master Service Agreement. The Tink Link SDKs for iOS and Android on GitHub are MIT |
| Tools exposed | 4 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-24 | 2026-09-15 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-12-01 |  |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-12-01 |  |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| 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 | not found in the text |  |
| Popularity | 586 stars, 1.3M npm/wk, 657k PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | none |

## 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.

**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

### 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

### 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, Plaid or Tink?

Plaid scores 69.8 (B) on agent readiness against Tink's 62.5 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Tink leads on transparency & trust.

### Do Plaid and Tink need an API key?

Plaid takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Tink uses an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Plaid and Tink without installing anything?

Yes. Plaid has a hosted endpoint at https://production.plaid.com and Tink at https://api.tink.com.

### Are Plaid and Tink open source?

Plaid is open source (MIT (SDKs and MCP server)). No open-source release is listed for Tink.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-tink.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-tink.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "plaid", "b": "tink"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare plaid tink`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/plaid.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/tink.json

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