Head to head · Bank accounts · October 2026 research run
Tink vs TrueLayer
Tink and TrueLayer score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 62.5 (B) and 62.1 (B). TrueLayer leads on reliability and schema & documentation. Both do bank accounts.
Which one, for what
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
- Maintenance & community, 69 against 38
- Transparency & trust, 90 against 62
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
Good for UK data and payments from one licensed vendor, with EEA coverage through the Irish entity on Data v1.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 71 against 62
- Schema & documentation, 89 against 73
Watch for
No public pricing anywhere on the site or in the docs
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Tink | TrueLayer | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 62 | 71 | TrueLayer +9 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 73 | 89 | TrueLayer +16 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 74 | 73 | Tink +1 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 63 | 66 | TrueLayer +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 10 | 10 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 69 | 38 | Tink +31 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 90 | 62 | Tink +28 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 62.5 · B | 62.1 · B |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Tink | TrueLayer |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Tink AB (Visa) | TrueLayer |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.tink.com | https://api.truelayer.com |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | OAuth |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Tink's Master Service Agreement. The Tink Link SDKs for iOS and Android on GitHub are MIT | Apache-2.0 or MIT (signing libraries) |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-15 | 2026-06-25 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-05-12 | |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-12 | |
| Customer content may train models | yes | |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | |
| Popularity | none | 23 stars, 17k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (2) |
Verdicts
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.
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
Tink
- 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.
- Renew tokens on a timer. Client tokens last 30 minutes and user tokens two hours, and the client credentials flow returns no refresh token.
- Send the account holder through Tink Link in a browser. Bank consent cannot be completed by API calls alone.
- Read transactions from /data/v2/transactions with
pageSizeup to 100 and follownextPageToken. - Send an Idempotency-Key header on consent and payment writes. Keys are kept for 24 hours.
TrueLayer
- Use auth.truelayer-sandbox.com and api.truelayer-sandbox.com with a separate sandbox client; live credentials don't work there
- Send the user's IP when they're present, or a bank allows 4 calls a day per account
- Check the retry column of the Data API error table before retrying; codes marked No need the user or a config fix
- Set data_access_type to one_time for a single read and skip the 90-day reauthorisation
- Append .md to any docs URL to get the page as Markdown
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Tink or TrueLayer?
Tink and TrueLayer score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 62.5 (B) and 62.1 (B). TrueLayer leads on reliability and schema & documentation.
Do Tink and TrueLayer need an API key?
Both use an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call Tink and TrueLayer without installing anything?
Yes. Tink has a hosted endpoint at https://api.tink.com and TrueLayer at https://api.truelayer.com.
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- Plaid vs Tink
- Plaid vs TrueLayer
- Salt Edge Account Information vs Tink
- Salt Edge Account Information vs TrueLayer
- Teller vs Tink
- Teller vs TrueLayer
- Tink vs Yapily
- TrueLayer vs Yapily
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/tink-vs-truelayer.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/tink.json·/api/v1/tools/truelayer.json - From a terminal
anchor compare tink truelayer(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "tink", "b": "truelayer"}at/mcp, no key