8 Best KYC Providers In 2026

Quick answer: Eight vendors are worth a product team’s shortlist. Persona gives designers the most control over the screens. Sumsub gives the most finished flow to teams without design resource. Veriff has the lowest published entry price at $0.80 per verification. KYCAID is the cheapest way to run a check that already includes AML screening. Shufti is the only one with a free tier that never expires. iDenfy sits in the middle on price and commitment. Jumio and Onfido publish no pricing at all.

Identity verification is the one screen in a signup flow that almost nobody designs. It arrives as a vendor SDK, takes over the viewport, and asks a person who has not yet received any value from your product to photograph their passport. Then the drop-off shows up in the funnel and somebody calls it a conversion problem.

It is a design problem with a procurement cause. The vendor decides how much of that screen you can change, how many steps the user walks, and whether a failed check ends in a dead end or a retry. So this list ranks KYC providers on what a design or product team can actually influence after the contract is signed.

One note on the statistics that usually open posts like this. You will read that 60% of users abandon onboarding, or 68% abandon identity checks. I tried to trace both. The 60% routes through a consultancy article back to a vendor blog post with no sample size, year or method attached. The 68% comes from a vendor press page. Neither survives a basic sourcing check, so neither appears below.

How this list was judged. Five criteria weighted toward design control: how much of the verification UI can be restyled or rebuilt; whether pricing is published well enough to model unit cost; whether a free tier or trial exists for prototyping; what the vendor publishes about presentation attack detection; and what it costs to add AML screening, since that is usually the second invoice nobody budgeted for.

Comparison table

1. Persona, for designers who want to build the screens

Persona is the one chosen by teams that want verification to feel like part of the product rather than a detour out of it. It is built around configurable workflows, which is the difference between restyling a vendor’s screen and composing your own.

The published price is Essential starting at $250 per month with a minimum contract term of 12 months. Growth and Enterprise are quote-only. Persona says contracts are pay-per-successful-verification and that it does not charge for users who drop off, but it publishes no per-verification rate at any tier, so you cannot model unit economics from the public page. On security it is the most decorated name here, stating SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, HIPAA and FedRAMP authorisation.

Pros: the most control over the user-facing flow of any vendor in this group; no charge for drop-offs; the broadest published certification set.

Cons: a 12-month minimum contract on the entry plan is a hard commitment for a product still finding its shape; no per-verification price is published at any tier; Document AI is marked “Limited” on Essential, and KYB and the Graph fraud tools require Growth or above.

2. Sumsub, for teams that want a finished flow

Sumsub sells a hosted journey covering document capture, liveness and face match, with AML screening on the higher tier. The flow is the most finished of the group out of the box, which is exactly why it suits teams with no designer to spare. The company was founded in 2015 and claims coverage of 220 or more countries and 14,000 or more document types.

Basic is $1.35 per verification with a $149 minimum monthly commitment. Compliance is $1.85 with a $299 minimum, adding AML screening, ongoing monitoring, address verification and Travel Rule support. The trial is 14 days and 50 checks, and Sumsub states you are charged for successful verifications only.

Pros: published per-verification pricing on both tiers; billing on successful checks only; the largest claimed document-type library here.

Cons: the $299 minimum on the AML tier is steep before launch; the pricing page states that if you do not use every feature included in a user verification, the full cost still applies; self-serve plans are card-only, with no invoicing stated.

3. Veriff, for the lowest published entry price

Veriff, founded in Tallinn in 2015, publishes the most detailed rate card in this comparison, and it is the one to beat on unit price. Essential is $0.80 per verification with a $49 monthly minimum, Plus is $1.39 with $99, and Premium is $1.89 with $209. Enterprise starts at 5,000 verifications a month. The trial is 15 days and up to 50 sessions with no card required.

Read the add-on list before celebrating the $0.80. PEP and sanctions screening costs an extra $0.64 per verification, ongoing monitoring $0.09, and two-year data retention $0.30. A check that includes screening therefore lands at $1.44, which reorders the table. Veriff is also the only vendor here that states its iBeta conformance level precisely: ISO/IEC 30107-3 Levels 1 and 2, not Level 3.

Pros: the lowest published base price; a 15-day trial with no card; unusually precise disclosure of what each add-on costs.

Cons: screening is a per-check add-on rather than a tier, so the headline price understates a compliance use case; self-serve is capped at 10,000 sessions a month before you are moved to enterprise sales; fully automated decisions are Essential-only, with specialist-assisted review starting at Plus.

4. KYCAID, for the cheapest check that already includes screening

KYCAID bundles AML screening into its middle tier instead of selling it as a per-check add-on, and that is the whole argument for it. The KYC verification service is priced in three tiers: Basic at EUR 0.75 for document and face verification, Standard at EUR 0.85 adding AML screening, and Advanced at EUR 1.10 adding address verification. Each plan includes EUR 50 upon registration, and the pricing page states no monthly minimum or platform fee. Enterprise starts from 10,000 verifications a month.

Put that against the add-on pricing above and the comparison is stark. A verification with sanctions and PEP screening costs EUR 0.85 here, $1.44 at Veriff, $1.80 at iDenfy and $1.85 at Sumsub. For a design audience the country-level checks matter too: a Turkish Kimlik check is EUR 0.05, a Brazilian CPF check EUR 0.10, an Indian Aadhaar check with SMS OTP EUR 0.60. If your users sit in one market, a registry check replaces the document capture flow with a single call. The liveness detection service publishes an average check time of 11 seconds and coverage of 248 countries and territories.

Pros: by a clear margin the cheapest published route to a check that includes AML screening; no monthly minimum or platform fee stated; documentless country checks can remove the document step entirely.

Cons: its pricing and product pages state no security certification such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2, while Persona, Veriff and iDenfy publish theirs; the sanctions and KYB pages publish no coverage counts, so screening depth cannot be compared against vendors that do; the pay-as-you-go module list shows units but no amounts, so ongoing monitoring and a company check cannot be priced from the public page.

5. iDenfy, for mid-market teams with predictable volume

iDenfy, founded in 2017, publishes its commercial terms in developer documentation as well as on its pricing page. Pay-as-you-go is $1.35 per verification with a $135 minimum monthly commitment, with sanctions and PEP screening at +$0.45, proof of address at +$0.90 and 3D liveness at +$0.20. The FAQ says enterprise volume can bring the rate as low as $0.50. The trial is 14 days with 10 free checks and no card.

It claims over 3,000 document types from more than 200 countries, and 180 or more company registries. The important caveat is regional: its registry checks run only for Lithuania, Hungary and the US, its criminal background check and AAMVA driver verification are US-only, and its lost or stolen document check is Lithuania-only.

Pros: modest published commitment; add-on prices disclosed individually; terms documented where engineers will find them.

Cons: the documented registry coverage is far narrower than the headline country count suggests; unused verifications do not roll over month to month; the pricing calculator on the page contains an arithmetic error, which is a small thing that says something about maintenance.

6. Shufti, for prototyping without a sales call

Shufti is the only provider here with a free tier that does not expire. Free Forever covers up to 10 verifications every month, and Essentials starts from $1.50 per verification for up to 20,000 checks. Enterprise is quote-only. Founded in 2017, it claims 240 or more countries, 10,000 or more document types and screening against 1,700 or more global watchlists, and it is one of only two vendors in this research claiming iBeta Level 3 liveness conformance.

Pros: a free tier with no expiry, so an integration can be built without approval; iBeta Level 3 is the strongest liveness claim in this group; broad published coverage.

Cons: the highest published entry price per verification here; “starting from” means the real rate comes from a quote, and no volume curve is disclosed; ten free checks a month will not cover a beta.

7. Jumio, for regulated enterprises at scale

Jumio claims support for more than 5,000 ID types across 200 countries and territories, the largest ID-type claim of any vendor in this comparison. It publishes no pricing, offering a total cost of ownership calculator and a contact form in place of a rate card.

Pros: the broadest published ID-type coverage here; long established in regulated sectors; the TCO calculator at least gives some way to estimate cost before a sales call.

Cons: no published pricing, no published minimum and no self-serve trial, so a product team cannot evaluate it without involving procurement; its own About page states no headquarters, founding year or security certification; its homepage gives two different figures for its Identity Graph, which is the kind of detail a procurement reviewer notices.

8. Onfido, now Entrust Identity Verification

Onfido was founded in London in 2012 and became part of Entrust when the acquisition completed in April 2024. Entrust reported that Onfido had more than 1,200 customers and over $140 million in annual revenue before the deal. The product is now sold as Entrust Identity Verification and is built around a no-code Workflow Studio, which is closer to what a product team wants than a fixed SDK.

One figure to treat carefully: Entrust’s materials mention more than 150 countries, but that refers to Entrust’s own customer base rather than Onfido’s verification coverage, so it should not be read as a coverage claim.

Pros: a long track record in regulated sectors; the no-code workflow builder gives more structural control than most hosted flows; buyers already inside Entrust get one commercial relationship.

Cons: no published pricing and no self-serve path to a prototype; under the Entrust brand it publishes no country or document-type coverage figures at all, so it cannot be compared on coverage; buyers researching “Onfido” now land on a renamed product line inside a larger security vendor.

Which KYC provider has the best user experience?

None wins outright, because it depends on who owns the screens. Persona gives the most control to teams with design resource. Sumsub gives the best result to teams without it. If your users are concentrated in one country, a documentless registry check removes the document step entirely, which beats any amount of visual polish on a capture screen.

How much does KYC verification cost per check in 2026?

Published entry prices run from $0.80 at Veriff and EUR 0.75 at KYCAID up to $1.50 at Shufti. Jumio, Onfido and Persona publish no per-verification rate. Two things change the real figure: monthly minimums, which range from $49 to $299, and screening add-ons, which cost $0.64 at Veriff and $0.45 at iDenfy but are bundled into the EUR 0.85 tier at KYCAID.

What is a liveness check, and why does it affect conversion?

A liveness check confirms a real person is physically present in front of the camera rather than a photo, a replayed video or a deepfake. It affects conversion through its implementation. A passive check analyses the selfie and asks nothing of the user. An active check asks them to turn their head or follow a prompt, adding assurance and friction together.

Does the design of a verification flow really change drop-off?

It changes what users can recover from, which is the part a designer controls. A failed check with no retry path and no explanation sends the user back to the start or out of the product entirely. Before signing, ask the vendor what the failure screen says, whether you can rewrite it, and how many retries a user gets. Those three answers predict more of your funnel than any accuracy claim on the homepage.

FAQ

Which KYC provider is cheapest?
Veriff at $0.80 and KYCAID at EUR 0.75 publish the two lowest entry rates, and at October 2026 rates those are close to equal. They separate once screening is added: Veriff charges $0.64 extra per verification, while KYCAID includes it at EUR 0.85. Shufti is the only vendor with a permanently free tier, at 10 checks a month.

Can I test a KYC provider before signing a contract?
Yes, with five of the eight. Shufti gives 10 free verifications every month with no expiry, Veriff 15 days and 50 sessions with no card, Sumsub 14 days and 50 checks, iDenfy 14 days or 10 checks, and KYCAID a EUR 50 registration credit. Jumio, Onfido and Persona’s main tiers need a sales conversation first.

How much of the verification screen can I customise?
This varies more than any other factor and is rarely stated on a pricing page. Persona is built around configurable workflows and gives the most control. Hosted flows like Sumsub’s are designed to be used as shipped, with branding changes rather than structural ones. Ask for sandbox access before deciding, not a demo.

What standards should I ask a KYC vendor about?
Two by name. ISO/IEC 30107-3:2023 is the testing standard for biometric presentation attack detection, and the level matters: Veriff states Levels 1 and 2, while Shufti claims Level 3. NIST SP 800-63-4, finalised in 2025, requires presentation attack detection whenever biometrics are collected remotely, with an impostor attack presentation accept rate below 0.07, and treats digital injection attacks as a separate threat.