Yodlee Core API

# Fix list: Yodlee Core API

From Anchor Terminal's listing at https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/yodlee-financial-data, the October 2026 research run, assessed 8 October 2026. Grade E, 41.9 out of 100.

This is everything the published grade says the listing lacks, the biggest possible gain to the total first. It comes from the reason given for each score, the checklist each category was scored against (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist), the provenance checks, the deductions, what we couldn't check and what the review panel asked for. A fix counts at the next check, once it's public.

For a coding agent working on Yodlee Core API: work through the items below in the product, its docs and its public pages. Each category gives the reason for its score, with the points each checklist item earned, and the checklist itself, so the gap is the items that earned less than their points. Change the product, not the wording, and keep a note of what you changed and where it's published.

## 1. Reliability, 15 out of 100, up to 17 more on the total

Why it scored 15: Graded as a hosted API. No status page is linked from yodlee.com or the developer portal, and status.yodlee.com did not answer (0). With no incident history to read, 5 of 30. No rate limit with numbers was found in the docs or the Swagger file, which lists no 429 response (0). No 429, backoff or idempotency guidance found (0). No public SLA. The Security FAQ mentions only contracted recovery targets for clients' disaster recovery options (0). The Core API v1.1 is generally available (10).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-reliability):

Hosted APIs, MCP servers, models and platforms.

- 20, a public status page with component history (Statuspage, Instatus, BetterStack or the vendor's own).
- 0 to 30, the incident record for the last 90 days on that page. 30 for a clean record or trivial incidents only, 20 for minor incidents only, 10 for one major outage (an hour or more of a core API down, or errors across the board), 0 for several. 5 when there's no history we could read, and the note says so.
- 15, rate limits documented with numbers.
- 15, documented 429 or overload handling (Retry-After, backoff guidance), and idempotency keys or safe-retry guidance where writes are involved.
- 10, an SLA published for any paid tier.
- 10, the surface agents use is generally available, not beta or preview.

Local packages, SDKs, frameworks and stdio MCP servers.

- 20, installs from an official package with supported runtimes stated.
- 25, a public CI and test suite, passing on the default branch.
- 0 to 25, open crash or regression issues relative to activity (25 for few and handled, 0 for many, old and unanswered).
- 15, semver discipline and breaking changes called out in a changelog.
- 15, version 1.0 or later, or declared stable.

Protocols are read from their reference implementations, the public facilitators or servers, spec stability and test vectors.

## 2. Payments & pricing, 15 out of 100, up to 10.6 more on the total

Why it scored 15: No x402, MPP or L402 (0). No price on yodlee.com or the developer portal, both `/pricing` addresses return 404 and product pages ask for a demo (0). The sandbox is free on registration with five preconfigured users. The registration page is disallowed by robots.txt, so we could not confirm that it asks for no card (15 of 20). A person registers in a browser and takes credentials from a dashboard (0).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-payments):

The published rubric, also on the [x402 page](https://www.anchorterminal.com/x402/).

- 40, a machine payment protocol (x402, MPP or L402) on the tool's own endpoints. 10 to 30 when it covers only some endpoints or only goes through a third party, and the note says which.
- 20, per-call or per-unit pricing published without a login. 10 for public plan-only pricing, 0 for "contact sales" or prices behind a login.
- 20, a free tier or trial that doesn't need a card.
- 20, autonomous onboarding, meaning an agent can get access without a person signing up in a browser (keyless use, x402, a programmatic key API).

Payment platforms and agent wallets rarely charge for their own API over a machine protocol, so the first line has steps for them, and the highest one that applies counts. 40 when x402, MPP or L402 runs on all their own endpoints, 30 when it runs on part of their own API, 25 when their merchants can accept one, 20 for running a facilitator, 15 for paying as a buyer, and 0 when the only protocol is their own. Merchant acceptance sits above a facilitator because the platform's own customers can charge agents through it, while a facilitator settles for sellers who wire up the protocol themselves. The counter-argument (a facilitator does more for the protocol as a whole) has a point. Each note says which step applied.

Open-source software you run yourself is scored on its hosted or paid option if it has one. A free, self-hosted package with nothing to buy gets 20, 20 and 20 for the last three lines, and 0 to 40 for the first only if it ships a payment protocol.

## 3. Security & auth, 49 out of 100, up to 8.9 more on the total

Why it scored 49: A `clientId` and `secret` in a form body, never in the URL, are exchanged for a bearer token that expires after 30 minutes and is bound to one user's `loginName` or to the admin. Tokens can be revoked, credentials can be replaced on the dashboard, and each environment has its own. No scopes (22 of 30). A user token reads one user's data, datasets are enabled per customer and the Account Profile dataset needs Yodlee Security Office approval. No read-only credential and no confirmation on deletes (9 of 20). Responses carry bank-written text, and no guidance on untrusted content was found beyond a note on escaped quotes (3 of 15). Consent history endpoints and a `referenceCode` on errors exist. No operator call log was found in public docs, and the dashboard was not read (3 of 15). No security.txt, bug bounty or disclosure address found. The Security FAQ states an annual SOC 2 Type 2 assessment (report under NDA), PCI DSS 4.0.1 Level One and yearly third-party penetration tests (12 of 20).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-security):

- 0 to 30, the credential model. 30 for OAuth 2.1 with scopes, or scoped and revocable keys with rotation. 20 for plain revocable API keys. 10 for one all-powerful key. 10 off when a secret can travel in a URL query string as a documented option.
- 0 to 20, read-only or least-privilege modes, and confirmation or approval for destructive actions.
- 0 to 15, prompt-injection posture where the tool returns untrusted content (documented mitigations or guidance). A tool that returns no untrusted content gets 10.
- 0 to 15, audit logs or per-call visibility for the operator.
- 0 to 20, a security programme. security.txt or a disclosure policy, a bug bounty, SOC 2 or ISO 27001, advisories handled in public.

Models are read for retention, whether API data trains models (and whether that's off by default), zero-retention options and certifications. Frameworks for telemetry defaults, approval hooks, guardrails and sandboxing.

## 4. Agent ergonomics, 58 out of 100, up to 6.8 more on the total

Why it scored 58: `include` adds optional detail, `top` caps list size at 500, count endpoints exist for transactions and providers, and derived endpoints return net worth and transaction summaries (16 of 25). `skip` and `top` paging with next and previous links in the response header, plus date, account, category, keyword and container filters on transactions (17 of 20). Errors return `errorCode`, `errorMessage` and `referenceCode`, and the spec says codes do not change (15 of 20). No idempotency key or retry guidance. Passing an unused `loginName` to the token call creates a user implicitly, which a retry would not duplicate (4 of 20). Two headers and a token per call. No official server SDK, only client generation from the Swagger file, and FastLink guides for iOS, Android, React Native and Flutter (6 of 15).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-ergonomics):

- 0 to 25, context cost. For MCP, the number and size of the tool definitions (25 for ten or fewer compact tools, 15 for 11 to 30, 5 for more than 30, plus up to 10 back for toolsets, dynamic loading or read-only subsets). For APIs, whether responses can be sized (field selection, limits, summaries).
- 20, pagination, filtering and output-size controls.
- 20, actionable, documented error responses, codes and messages an agent can recover from.
- 20, idempotency or safe retries, and for MCP the `readOnlyHint` and `destructiveHint` annotations.
- 15, sensible defaults, few required parameters, and official SDKs in at least two languages.

Models are read for tool use, structured output, prompt caching, context length, batch and SDKs. Frameworks for how much code and how many defaults a tool-calling agent with MCP needs.

## 5. Maintenance & community, 33 out of 100, up to 5.9 more on the total

Why it scored 33: The newest release notes, July Week 3 2026, are dated 31 July 2026, 69 days before the check (20 of 30). That is the only dated entry since 10 July, so the three-in-90-days line is not met (0). Release notes are dated and appear about every two months. On GitHub, seven issues and pull requests on `Yodlee/OpenAPI` are open, the oldest from April 2021 and the newest from 20 February 2026 with no reply (6 of 15). No official SDKs, and the Swagger file trails the API by four releases (4 of 15). The spec repository has no CI or tests (3 of 10).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-maintenance):

- 0 to 30, time since the last release, or the last published model or API change for a closed service. 30 within 30 days, 20 within 90, 10 within 180, 0 older.
- 20, at least three releases or dated changelog entries in the last 90 days.
- 0 to 25, responsiveness. Issues and pull requests answered on GitHub (the open issues and how recent the replies are). For closed services, a public changelog and a support or community channel that answers, 0 to 15.
- 15, presence in the official MCP registry under a verified namespace (MCP servers), or current official SDKs (APIs and models).
- 10, package health, current dependencies and CI.

Models are read for deprecation notice periods and model churn rather than release counts.

## 6. Schema & documentation, 71 out of 100, up to 4.7 more on the total

Why it scored 71: A public Swagger 2.0 file (`Yodlee/OpenAPI`, MIT) with 70 paths, 98 operations and 267 definitions. Its last update, on 22 April 2026, brought it to the November 2025 release, so fields from the June and July 2026 notes such as `isCrypto` are missing (22 of 25). No llms.txt (404) and no Markdown docs (0). 96 of 98 operations carry a long description with defaults, sandbox limits and, for the seven deprecated ones, the replacement (16 of 20). Definitions hold 204 enums, but query parameters such as `container` and `baseType` are plain strings with allowed values only in the description, and `dataset$filter` is a free expression (9 of 15). The file has no examples. The docs site shows sample requests and responses, and each operation lists its 400 errors by `Y` code, with 401 and 404 undescribed (9 of 15). An `Api-Version` header, dated release notes and spec tags by release month (15).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-schema):

APIs and MCP servers.

- 25, a machine-readable contract (a public OpenAPI file or similar; for MCP, typed JSON Schema inputs on every tool).
- 10, llms.txt or Markdown docs served for agents.
- 0 to 20, descriptions that say what a tool is for, when to use it and when not to, read from the tool definitions in the source or the API reference.
- 0 to 15, typed inputs with enums, constraints and required fields, and no free-form JSON blobs.
- 0 to 15, examples and documented error responses.
- 15, versioning and a public changelog.

Models are read from the API reference, the OpenAPI file, llms.txt, the structured-output and tool-use docs and the model cards. Frameworks from docs a model can follow, typed interfaces, examples and the API reference.

## 7. Transparency & trust, 53 out of 100, up to 4.1 more on the total

Made of editorial 32, provenance 73.

Why it scored 53: Closed service with no published service agreement or developer terms. The Swagger file names a Yodlee Developer Licence at an address that returns 404. The spec itself is MIT (8 of 30). The privacy notice says it covers Yodlee's direct-to-consumer services and websites, and that a client's own practices govern services delivered through a client. The Security FAQ says client data is kept until the client deletes it by API or written request, is encrypted with AES-256, and is not used in non-production environments. No DPA is public (12 of 30). No written deprecation policy. The Swagger file marks seven operations deprecated and names replacements, without dates (6 of 20). The FAQ says most core services run from colocation data centres with a move to AWS under way. No sub-processor list or named data locations (6 of 20).

The checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist-transparency):

- 0 to 30, source availability and licence clarity. 30 for open source under an OSI licence, 15 for closed with clear terms, 0 for unclear terms.
- 0 to 30, data handling and retention statements that agree with each other (privacy policy, DPA, retention periods, subprocessors).
- 0 to 20, a deprecation policy or notices with dates.
- 0 to 20, telemetry disclosed with an opt-out (local software), or subprocessors and data locations disclosed (hosted).

The other half of Transparency and trust is the provenance score, computed from checked facts (below). The category score is the mean of the two.

Provenance checks not met in full (half of this category, computed from checked facts):

- Status page: not found (0 of 10)
- security.txt: not found (0 of 10)

## What we couldn't check

What we couldn't read counted as absent. Publishing it on a page a plain HTTP fetch can read (not only in a browser) lets the next check count it.

- unchecked: the API host for each environment. The public docs give paths such as `/ysl/accounts` and say credentials and endpoints are on the dashboard, which needs a login
- unchecked: whether registration asks for a card and which agreement a developer accepts. `/user/register` is disallowed by the developer portal's robots.txt and was not fetched
- unchecked: the Postman quick start guide linked from the docs, which is hosted by Postman and drawn by script
- unchecked: the SOC 2 Type 2 report, which the Security FAQ places under NDA
- No price, service agreement, SLA, status page, rate limit, bug bounty or sub-processor list was found in the pages read
- status.yodlee.com did not answer from our network and no status page is linked from the site, so the status page is scored as absent
- Production and development environments are named in the docs, but how access to them is granted was not established
- Some pages were fetched shortly after midnight on 9 October 2026. The batch date of 8 October is used throughout, as the brief requires

## Weaknesses

- No public price, service agreement or developer terms. The terms address named in the Swagger file returns 404
- No status page, rate limit, 429 guidance, idempotency key or SLA was found in the pages read
- No official server SDK. Yodlee's docs tell developers to generate a client from the Swagger file
- The Swagger file was last updated on 22 April 2026 to the November 2025 release and lacks fields added in June and July 2026, such as `isCrypto`
- The sandbox cannot register new users, and full account numbers and holder details need Yodlee Security Office approval
- The privacy notice covers only Yodlee's own consumer services and websites, and no DPA or sub-processor list is public

## What costs an agent a turn today

The notes we give agents before they call it. Each one is a workaround an agent shouldn't need.

- Get a token with `POST /auth/token`, sending `Api-Version: 1.1` and the end user's `loginName` as headers and `clientId` and `secret` in a form body. Reuse it for up to 30 minutes
- Use the admin `loginName` only for administrative calls such as webhook subscriptions. A token made with a user's `loginName` reads only that user's data
- In the sandbox, pick one of the five preconfigured users. Registering new users is not supported there
- Page `GET /transactions` with `skip` and `top` (1 to 500). Without dates it returns the last 30 days, and at most two years with `fromDate` and `toDate`
- A person must link accounts in FastLink 4 first. Then read `GET /providerAccounts` for link status before `GET /accounts`
- Subscribe to `DATA_UPDATES` or `REFRESH` webhooks, or poll `GET /dataExtracts/events` in windows of at most 60 minutes, and do not poll accounts in a loop

## When it's done

Send what changed and where it's published as a dispute (https://www.anchorterminal.com/builders/#disputes, or `POST https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/contact` with `"kind": "dispute"`). Disputes are answered in public, and the listing is checked again by the same checklist. Paying for an audit or a listing claim changes nothing here.