Plaid billing
Learn about pricing, what is considered a billable event, and how to monitor your bill
Pricing plans
Plaid offers three types of pricing plans:
- Pay as you go – has no minimum spend or commitment.
- Growth – minimum spend of $100/month, 3 month commitment. Lower per-use costs than Pay as you go plans.
- Custom (aka Scale) – minimum spend (typically $500/month) and annual commitment but lower per-use costs than Pay as you go or Growth plans. Minimums can apply across the entire Plaid account or by product.
When signing up for a plan, you will be offered a choice between Pay as you go and Custom plans. To select a Growth plan, sign up for Pay as you go and then upgrade your plan. To change your plan, see Viewing or changing pricing plans.
For customers based in Europe, only Custom plans are offered. In addition, Payment Initiation, Signal, and Transfer are currently offered only via Custom plans.
Pricing information
To view the exact pricing you may be eligible for, apply for Production access for that product. Pricing information for Pay as you go plans will be displayed on the last page before you submit your access request. For exact pricing details for Custom plans, select the Custom pricing option on the last page, and Sales will get in touch to inform you what pricing and discounts you may be eligible for. Or, you can contact Sales via the contact form.
Pricing models
Plaid has multiple different pricing models, depending on the product. These models only apply to Production traffic; usage of Sandbox and Development environments is always free.
Note that the details outlined below are general information and guidance about typical pricing structures and policies for new customers. Your specific pricing and billing structure is governed by your agreement with Plaid. If you have questions about your bill, contact Support.
Endpoints that are not associated with any particular product are generally available to Plaid customers free of charge. Examples of these free-to-use endpoints include Institutions endpoints, Item endpoints, /accounts/get
(not to be confused with /accounts/balance/get
, which is associated with the Balance product), and token management endpoints.
One-time fee
You will incur charges for one-time fee products whenever the product is successfully added to an Item. This occurs when an Item has been successfully created by Link and this product was specified in /link/token/create
. An Item is considered successfully created if an access_token
was generated. If the Item was not initialized with the product at the time of creation, it can also be added later by calling a product endpoint belonging to that product on the Item.
For the Auth and Identity products, if the product was added to the Item via the optional_products
parameter in the /link/token/create
call, you will not incur charges for those products until their corresponding endpoint is called. For example, if you initialize an Item with auth
in the products
parameter and identity
in the optional_products
parameter, you will not be charged for Identity on that Item until you call /identity/match
or /identity/get
for that access token.
For Document Income and Payroll Income, charges will be incurred when data is available to be accessed. This will typically be indicated by the INCOME_VERIFICATION
webhook firing with the status of VERIFICATION_STATUS_PROCESSING_COMPLETE
. For Document Income, the fee depends on the documents processed and which processing options are enabled (i.e. fraud, document parsing, or both). For bank statements, the fee is based on the number of pages in the statement; for all other document types, there is a flat fee per document.
For Hosted Link, each session delivered via SMS or email will incur a one-time fee. There is no fee to use Hosted Link if you are not using Plaid to deliver sessions.
When using Transfer, each Item initialized with Transfer (unless created using the /transfer/migrate_account/
endpoint) will incur the one-time Auth fee, and no additional fee will be incurred for using Auth endpoints with that Item.
For one-time fee products, it does not matter how many API calls are made for the Item; the cost is the same regardless of whether the product's endpoints are called many times or zero times.
Products that use one-time fee pricing are: Auth, Identity, Income (except for /credit/bank_income/refresh
and /credit/payroll_income/refresh
, which use per-request pricing), and Hosted Link when used with with Link Delivery (beta).
Subscription fee
The subscription fee model is similar to the one-time fee model, except that the Item will incur a monthly subscription fee as long as it exists, even if API calls cannot be successfully made for the Item. Removing the Item will end the subscription. Once a subscription fee product has been added to an Item, it is not possible to end the subscription without removing the Item via /item/remove
. Plaid's subscription cycle is based on calendar months in the UTC time zone; each month begins a new cycle. Fees for Items created or removed in the middle of the month are not pro-rated.
Products that use subscription fee pricing are: Transactions (except for the /transactions/refresh
endpoint), Recurring Transactions, Liabilities, and Investments.
Investments has two separate subscriptions that can be associated with an Item: Investments Holdings and Investments Transactions. Adding Investments to an Item via /link/token/create
or by calling /investments/holdings/get
adds the Investments Holdings subscription. Calling /investments/transactions/get
on an Item adds the Investments Transactions subscription.
Per-request flat fee
For per-request flat fee products, a flat fee is charged for each successful API call to that product endpoint.
Products and endpoints that use per-request flat fee pricing are: Balance (/accounts/balance/get
), /transactions/refresh
, /credit/bank_income/refresh
, /credit/payroll_income/refresh
, /asset_report/audit_copy/create
, /asset_report/pdf/get
, and Signal (/signal/evaluate
).
Per-request flexible fee
For per-request flexible fee products, a fee is charged for each successful API call to that product endpoint. The fee will vary depending on the amount of information requested in the API request.
For Assets, the fee is calculated based on the number of Items in the report as well as the number of days of history requested. An additional fee is charged for an Asset Report containing more than 5 Items; this fee will be charged twice if the Asset Report contains more than 10 Items, and so on. An "Additional History" fee is also charged for each Item for which more than 61 days of history is requested. The Additional History fee is a flat fee regardless of how many days of additional history are requested; it does not matter how many days beyond 61 are requested.
For Statements, the flexible fee is calculated based on the number of statements within the date range requested.
For Enrich, the flexible fee is based on the number of transactions sent to be enriched.
Products that use per-request flexible fee pricing are: Assets, Statements, and Enrich.
Per-payment fee
For per-payment fee products, a fee is charged for each payment initiated with the product. A payment is considered initiated if the end user reached the end of the payment flow and received a confirmation success screen. Standing orders (recurring payments) are considered a single payment but are billed on a separate pricing schedule from one-time payments. Fees will vary depending on the network used to transfer the payment. For Transfer, a per-payment fee is also applied to funds transfers between your bank account and your balance held with Plaid, such as sweeps, or payments to and from the Plaid Ledger.
The per-payment fee is charged even if the payment is later reversed or clawed back. In such cases, a reversed payment fee may be charged as well.
When using Transfer, each Item with the Transfer product (unless created by the /transfer/migrate_account
endpoint) will also have Auth added to the Item and will incur a one-time Auth fee in addition to the per-payment Transfer fee.
Products that use per-payment fee pricing are: Payment Initiation (UK and Europe), Transfer, and Transfer UI.
Monitor fee model
Monitor uses a model with two fees:
- A base fee, which is incurred the first time a new user is scanned
- A rescanning fee, which is incurred based on the number of users rescanned each month
The rescanning fee is calculated based on the number of users on a rescanning program in a given month and works similarly to the subscription fee model. Plaid's subscription cycle is based on calendar months in the UTC time zone; each month begins a new cycle. Fees for users added to or removed from a rescanning program in the middle of the month are not pro-rated.
To avoid being rebilled for a user you no longer need recurring scans for (e.g., a user who has closed their account with you), create a program specifically for former users, make sure rescans are disabled, and move the user into that program when they are offboarded from your system.
Identity Verification fee model
For Identity Verification, a fee is charged based on the end user performing certain activities during the Link flow. The following events are billed:
- Base check (the first verification check run, typically when the end user enters their phone number to begin SMS verification. If this is skipped, the base check fee will be incurred later on. For example, if the SMS check is skipped in favor of the document check, the document check will incur both the base check fee and the document check fee.)
- Lightning verification (cost varies based on the end user's country, see your pricing contract for details)
- Document check
- Selfie check
If a retry is issued for a session, the retry will be billed like a new session, including the base check and any other verification checks included in the retried session.
Partnerships pricing
If you are using a Plaid partner, you will be charged for Plaid API usage performed by the partner using your processor token in the same way as if the calls had been made by you. If you have questions about the partner's API activity, contact the Plaid partner.
Viewing billable activity and invoices
To view billable activity for your account, see the Production Usage page on the Dashboard.
Invoices will be sent each month to the billing contact configured for the team.
Updating payment information
Pay as you go customers can update payment method and billing contact information on the Plaid Dashboard. Custom plan customers should contact their account manager to update this information.
Updating products
To view your currently enabled products, see the Products page on the Dashboard under the Team Settings section. To add additional products to your Plaid account you can submit the product request form located on the Dashboard. This form is also accessible via the Products page.
Viewing or changing pricing plans
To view current pricing or to switch between pricing plans, customers on Pay as you go or Growth plans can use the Billing & Plans page within the Dashboard. Customers with Pay as you go or Growth plans can upgrade or downgrade their plan at any time. Customers on Custom plans should contact Support or their Plaid Account Manager.