Middesk Alternatives for KYB (2026)

The best Middesk alternatives in 2026 are Runtime, Sumsub, Alloy, Footprint, Persona, and Baselayer. Sumsub fits global KYB with owner KYC, Alloy fits orchestration across data providers, Footprint fits KYB next to a vault and a compliance agent, Persona fits custom KYB flows, and Baselayer fits US lenders. Runtime is the AI agent harness for payment and fintech teams, and it works the merchant reviews any of them raise across risk, payment ops, finance, and support.

We make Runtime, so weigh our pick accordingly. Vendor facts below come from each vendor's own site, docs, or announcements.

Why teams look for Middesk alternatives

Middesk is one of the strongest KYB products for US businesses. It matches business names and TINs against the IRS, searches Secretary of State filings across all 50 states and DC, draws on 400+ government and authoritative sources, and says it verifies 7 million businesses a year. Middesk Agents work CIP, CDD, EDD, and merchant risk questions with evidence, and customers include Mercury, Brex, and Ramp. Teams still compare it for fair reasons:

• Coverage. Middesk is US-first. It now verifies businesses in 30 countries across Canada, Europe, and APAC, but teams onboarding across many more markets want broader registry coverage.
• Owner KYC. Middesk focuses on business identity and partners with identity providers for document and selfie checks on owners. Some teams want business and owner verification from one vendor.
• Scope. Middesk Agents work on business identity data. Merchant reviews that need processing volume, chargebacks, or held payouts leave its scope.
• Pricing model. Middesk does not publish pricing.

At a glance

The best Middesk alternatives

Runtime

Runtime is the AI agent harness for payment and fintech teams. It does not verify businesses. It gives onboarding, risk, compliance, payment ops, and support agents that run on isolated computers in your cloud and work the reviews your KYB vendor raises, with the ledger, processor, help desk, and the vendor's findings as tools. Agents draft the decision with evidence and wait for approval. See the KYB and KYC review agents guide.

Best for: B2B fintechs and payment companies whose merchant reviews touch other teams. Strengths: your cloud and your models; PII stripped from prompts and logs; one record per case; a forward-deployed engineer builds the first agents. Watch out for: you still need a KYB vendor. Runtime works next to it.

Sumsub

Sumsub is a verification and compliance platform covering KYC, KYB with UBO verification, AML screening, transaction monitoring, fraud prevention, and the crypto Travel Rule, with case management and Summy AI Copilot on top. For KYB it cites 30,000+ data sources across 220+ countries, and offers an in-house team that manually reviews complex corporate documents from 140+ countries. It reports more than 4,000 clients.

Best for: companies onboarding businesses across many countries. Strengths: global registry coverage; owner KYC and liveness in the same flow; KYB, AML, and transaction monitoring in one case queue. Watch out for: less US registry depth than Middesk; KYB is on a custom plan. See Middesk vs Sumsub for the full comparison.

Alloy

Alloy is an identity and risk decisioning platform for banks, credit unions, and fintechs. It orchestrates hundreds of data partners into no-code workflows for onboarding, KYC, KYB, AML screening, transaction monitoring, fraud, and credit decisioning. In 2026 it launched perpetual KYB in the UK and Europe, which re-runs business checks when ownership or registry data changes. Alloy reports more than 900 financial institutions and fintechs as customers.

Best for: banks and lenders that want to choose and swap KYB data providers. Strengths: data partner choice; business and consumer checks on one engine; credit decisioning alongside KYB. Watch out for: it orchestrates other vendors' data. Pricing is not published. See Alloy vs Sumsub.

Footprint

Footprint builds AI for financial crime compliance. Its platform covers KYC, KYB, bank account linking, a vault that decrypts data only inside secure enclaves, and compliance review led by Percy, an agentic system that investigates cases and runs a team's policies written in plain English. Footprint raised a $25M Series B in September 2026 and sells to regulated banks and fintechs.

Best for: teams that want KYB, KYC, vaulting, and a compliance agent from one vendor. Strengths: secure data vault; an agent that works cases out of the box; consumer and business onboarding together. Watch out for: less specialized in US business data than Middesk. Pricing is not published. See Footprint alternatives.

Persona

Persona offers KYB alongside its identity verification products, with flows teams build from intake through manual review. It verifies that a business exists against a chosen registry, checks a US business's EIN against the IRS, screens against 100+ global sanction and warning lists, searches 300+ million articles for adverse media, and runs Persona's own verifications on beneficial owners. A lighter Essentials package covers US-only KYB for startups.

Best for: teams that want to configure business and owner verification in one flow. Strengths: owner KYC from the same vendor; flexible flow building; case view for manual review. Watch out for: the EIN check and several business attributes are US-only. Pricing is not published.

Baselayer

Baselayer is a business identity, risk, and fraud platform. Its Business Search matches a business against Secretary of State filings across all 50 states, validates TINs with the IRS in real time, and screens for sanctions and watchlist matches. It also offers lien, lawsuit, and bankruptcy searches and portfolio monitoring. Baselayer says it is used at 2,300+ financial institutions and names Fundbox and Nuvei among its customers.

Best for: US lenders and payment companies that want KYB plus credit signals. Strengths: authoritative US data; lien and litigation data for underwriting; ongoing portfolio monitoring. Watch out for: US-focused, much like Middesk. Startup and growth plans are listed, but prices are not published.

Where Runtime enters the picture

Every vendor here settles who a business is, and several now ship agents that help reviewers inside their own platform. A merchant review goes further. Monitoring flags a new beneficial owner. Compliance re-reviews the business, payment ops decides whether to hold the next payout, finance weighs a reserve, and support answers the merchant when funds are late. Each team pulls its own piece in its own tool.

Runtime is the AI agent harness for payment and fintech teams. It keeps Middesk or whichever KYB vendor you choose as the identity source and puts agents on the work around it. The agent pulls the vendor's findings, checks disputes and payouts at the processor, reads prior tickets, drafts the recommendation, and stops for approval before a payout is held or a reserve applied. For document review in your own cloud, see open-source models for KYC and KYB.

• No single vendor to depend on. Agents run in your AWS, GCP, or Azure account or fully self-hosted, on your choice of sandbox provider with fallbacks, using Claude, GPT, Gemini, or open-weight models, with harness routing across Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode.
• Guardrails you set. Read-only by default, approvals before money moves, RBAC, masked credentials, PII stripped from prompts and logs, and every run recorded for your sponsor bank or examiner.
• Built for teams. Onboarding, risk, compliance, underwriting, payment ops, finance, and support share agents, review templates, and one memory of every merchant decision.
• An engineer, not an account executive. A forward-deployed AI engineer with a payments background from Hulu's payments team at Disney, Finix, Modern Treasury, or BlackRock builds the first agents with your team.

Turn your SOPs into agentsConnect your tools, even legacy onesKeep a human in the loopNo single vendor to depend onOne memory across teamsEvery run is stored

[::]New agent

Create a banking ops agent that handles RFIs, hold-harmless requests, and returns of funds from our partner bank, verifies against our ledger, and drafts replies for my approval.

Describe the agent you want

Agent ready

bank-ops-agent

Tools picked from your prompt

EmailLedgerSFTPMastercard

Rain saved $750k in vendor and salary spend with Runtime, which it uses across technical support, fraud and risk monitoring, compliance, cybersecurity, engineering investigations, PR reviews, QA testing, and reporting.

How to choose

• Stay on Middesk if you mostly onboard US businesses and want IRS, state registry, and UCC data with KYB agents.
• Choose Sumsub if you onboard businesses across many countries and want owner KYC, AML, and transaction monitoring in the same platform.
• Choose Alloy if you want to orchestrate several KYB and identity data providers with credit decisioning.
• Choose Footprint if you want KYB, KYC, a secure vault, and a compliance agent from one vendor.
• Choose Persona if you want to configure your own business and owner verification flow.
• Choose Baselayer if you are a US lender that wants KYB with lien and litigation data.
• Choose Runtime if merchant reviews need processing, dispute, and payout data and turn into work for other teams. It runs alongside any of the above. Read how Runtime and Middesk work together.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best Middesk alternatives?

Sumsub for global KYB with owner KYC, Alloy for KYB across many data partners, Footprint for KYB with a vault and the Percy agent, Persona for configurable KYB flows, Baselayer for US lenders, and Runtime for agents that work the merchant reviews KYB creates across every payment team.

Which Middesk alternatives publish pricing?

Sumsub publishes KYC pricing from $1.35 per verification, but business verification is on its custom plan. Runtime is available by request, with custom pricing, self-hosting, and a free pilot for approved teams. Middesk, Alloy, Footprint, Persona, and Baselayer do not publish KYB prices.

Is there a Middesk alternative for businesses outside the US?

Sumsub cites 30,000+ KYB data sources across 220+ countries, and Alloy launched perpetual KYB in the UK and Europe in 2026. Middesk itself now verifies businesses in 30 countries, so check its coverage before you switch.

Can Runtime replace Middesk?

No. Runtime does not hold business registry or IRS data. It runs agents that use Middesk or any KYB vendor as a tool and work the reviews, re-reviews, and escalations around those checks.

Where does Runtime fit next to Middesk?

Runtime is the AI agent harness for payment and fintech teams. Middesk verifies and monitors businesses; Runtime agents carry the merchant review into the ledger, processor, support tickets, and the teams that hold funds or answer the merchant, with approvals and one record per case.