Assessment
Plaid is used by fintech apps, lenders, brokerages, and banks that need to connect to their customers’ bank accounts. It serves more than 9,000 fintech companies and works with more than 12,000 financial institutions, and its best use cases are account linking for funding, balance and ownership checks before a payment, income and cash-flow data for lending, and fraud screening. It charges per connected account, per month, or per call, with a free sandbox and a pay-as-you-go plan, which puts it in the middle of the market on price. Its main competitors are MX, Finicity, TrueLayer, and Yapily.
Zach Perret and William Hockey started Plaid in 2013. Visa agreed to buy it for $5.3B in 2020, then dropped the deal after the US Justice Department sued to block it. Plaid ended 2025 with well over $500M of annual recurring revenue, up about 40%, and its newer products made up 21% of revenue while growing 92%. It was valued at $8B in a February 2026 employee share sale.
It fits a US or Canadian product that needs broad bank coverage and wants account data, identity, payments, and fraud tools from one vendor. It is a weaker fit for a company whose users are mainly in the UK or EU, where licensed open-banking providers such as TrueLayer and Yapily offer deeper bank payment coverage.
Rating by criterion
We score each of the eight criteria out of 100.
Sector criteria
Pick it for US account linking at scale. Nearly one million bank connections are made through Plaid each day, and it reaches more than 12,000 financial institutions.
Start in the free sandbox. Limited Production allows up to 200 live API calls per product before you pay and test against sample data in the sandbox.
Use its fraud tools alongside account checks. Plaid says its anti-fraud suite can improve fraud detection by up to 50% with little effect on sign-up rates.
Expect most apps you work with to support it. More than 9,000 fintech companies use Plaid, and its network spans the US, Canada, and Europe.
Vendor criteria
Look at its newer lines if you lend. Credit, payments, and fraud products made up 21% of 2025 revenue and grew 92% in the year.
Plan on self-serve setup for small volumes and a sales process for larger ones. Growth and Custom plans add integration help, premium support, and an account manager.
Ask for a quote on your exact mix of products. The pricing page explains one-time, subscription, and per-request billing, but most rates are not published.
Use pay-as-you-go to start without a commitment. Month-to-month terms cover general products, while volume discounts come with a Custom contract.
Against its peers
These are the other companies in payments and acquiring, with their ratings.
User comments
We read Plaid’s 2025 shareholder letter and its pricing page to see what buyers value, and set them against the main limit a buyer meets.
- Upside
- Downside
Where customer reviews couldn't be found, our analysts attempted to give a voice to buyer sentiment, drawing on real information from review sites, forums and product documentation.
Based on: Plaid, 2025 shareholder letter; Plaid, pricing.
Fact file
| Legal entity | Plaid Inc. |
|---|---|
| Chief executive | Zach Perret, co-founder |
| Annual recurring revenue | Well over $500M at end of 2025, up ~40% |
| Fintech customers | More than 9,000 |
| Financial institutions | More than 12,000 |
| Team | More than 900 people in 6 offices |
Competitive landscape
Open banking and account data providers a product team would compare with Plaid.
Plaid: 82
Comparisons
Key leadership
Zach Perret co-founded Plaid in 2013 with William Hockey and is its chief executive. The two met as junior consultants at Bain & Company.
How this review was created
This profile gives our own assessment of Plaid to companies selecting a Payments & acquiring provider. The Fintech Index receives nothing for featuring a firm, for sponsorship, or for advertising, and Plaid gave us no payment for the profile.
The rating equals the average of eight criteria, with every criterion running from 0 to 100. Four address buyer needs in this sector, and four address the company together with its commercial terms.
Ratings are our editorial judgment, made from public information: pricing and legal pages, product documentation, compliance disclosures, public reviews and filings. Fact-checking took place on November 3, 2026.
Source pages
- Plaid home page: https://plaid.com/ (As of November 3, 2026)
- Plaid, company: https://plaid.com/company/ (As of November 3, 2026)
- Plaid, pricing: https://plaid.com/pricing/ (As of November 3, 2026)
- Plaid 2025 shareholder letter: https://assets.ctfassets.net/ss5kfr270og3/4NtKmlgZGnKMJtJpKdhmA4/c0c0bef9e93d304fec0257675c2a43b9/2025_Plaid_Shareholder_Letter-final.pdf (As of November 3, 2026)
- TechCrunch, February 26, 2026: https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/26/plaid-valued-at-8b-in-employee-share-sale/ (As of November 3, 2026)
- Crunchbase News: https://news.crunchbase.com/fintech/plaid-completes-tender-offer-8b-valuation/ (As of November 3, 2026)