# Plaid vs TrueLayer

> Plaid has a score of 70 (BB) against TrueLayer's 62.4 (B). Both do bank accounts. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 45 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-truelayer
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-truelayer.md (~1,400 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-truelayer.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/plaid-vs-truelayer.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: 2026-10-04

Plaid has a score of 70 (BB) against TrueLayer's 62.4 (B). Both do bank accounts. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 45 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
- TrueLayer: grade B, 62.4/100, rank #217 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/truelayer.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/truelayer.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Plaid for agent ergonomics (+9), payments & pricing (+5), maintenance & community (+45), transparency & trust (+15).

Pick TrueLayer for nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Plaid | TrueLayer | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 68 | 71 | TrueLayer +3 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 93 | 89 | Plaid +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 82 | 73 | Plaid +9 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 67 | 66 | Plaid +1 |
| 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 | 38 | Plaid +45 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 81 | 66 | Plaid +15 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **70 · BB** | **62.4 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Plaid | TrueLayer |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Plaid | TrueLayer |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://production.plaid.com` | `https://api.truelayer.com` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio, Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT (SDKs and MCP server) | Apache-2.0 or MIT (signing libraries) |
| 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 | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-24 | 2026-06-25 |
| Popularity | 586 stars, 1.3M npm/wk, 657k PyPI/wk | 23 stars, 17k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 3/5 (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.

**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

### 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

### TrueLayer

1. Use auth.truelayer-sandbox.com and api.truelayer-sandbox.com with a separate sandbox client; live credentials don't work there
2. Send the user's IP when they're present, or a bank allows 4 calls a day per account
3. Check the retry column of the Data API error table before retrying; codes marked No need the user or a config fix
4. Set data_access_type to one_time for a single read and skip the 90-day reauthorisation
5. Append .md to any docs URL to get the page as Markdown

## Other comparisons with Plaid or TrueLayer

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