[I work at Plaid] The pricing model is here: https://plaid.com/docs/account/billing/ but @jpeeler is right that for a free app like this aimed at an audience of engineers you could also set it up for your users to BYO Plaid API keys.

This is the precise option I was thinking might be possible. Is it even reasonable for an individual developer to use their own API keys for something like this? I assume because you suggested it, it is. Any limitations that are impractical for personal use?

I'm in the middle of going down this path right now. It kind of works, except for certain banking institutions require more rigor than just getting accepted into the developer platform.

The steps, as far as I can tell, look something like this:

1) Sign up for Plaid developer account

2) Request developer access (without it you can only play with sandbox data)

3) Request production access

4) Submit application information including a name, website URL, and logo

5) Add a legal company entity name and address to my plaid account

6) Sign an MSA contract (no idea what its about)

7) Fill out a security questionnaire.

I'm at step 3 currently but I'm not sure how much further I'm realistically going to get. I'm not sure I could reasonably fill the rest without stretching the truth quite a bit and it seems to get deep into legal territory that I'm not sure I'm comfortable with.

There's also apparently different API behaviors depending on the bank: https://plaid.com/docs/link/oauth/#institution-specific-beha...

I don't have a lot of hope that this is going to pan out. I'm considering just scraping Chase with a headless puppeteer script instead.

It's possible that this may be simpler for other banks though, I've only tried Chase since that's my primary bank.

[I work at Plaid]

I will say that while annoying (especially for Chase, which has the most paperwork-type requirements for developers) this process should be totally doable for solo developers. You can put your own name as the legal entity name if you don't have a company. The Master Services Agreement (MSA) sounds scary but is just the contract between you and Plaid -- the legalese laying out what you're paying for, what Plaid is providing, and the rights and obligations of both parties. And when it comes to the security questionnaire, fill it out as accurately as you can, but you don't need to stress over it -- Plaid doesn't expect a solo hobbyist to have the same security measures as, like, a publicly traded company.

Thanks for the info -- this is really good to know. I'll keep pressing on as far as I can!

Can confirm: I did this as a solo user of a personal API integration with Chase via Plaid. I answered honestly given the scope of what I was doing: for example, IIRC there was a question about whether all employees are background checked, and another about how we deal with terminated employee access. As the only user/employee/human, I could confidently say I background check all my employees and that if they’re terminated, their access will be promptly revoked :D

Thank you! I wish Plaid would document this on the website. I've always been hesitant to convert from my dev account to a production account because everything gives the impression you're looking for a Serious Business.

I'd much rather just pay the money and have the standard API, and my workflows are all built around Plaid anyway.

I guess I'll give it a go now.

How much would it generally cost for a user? I couldn't figure it out from the pricing page.

You just need to have each person create their own Plaid account (which is probably the way you want it anyway). The free tier supports 100 institutions.

Last time I looked at this, I thought it was stated that the free/sandbox tier is not guaranteed to have the same SLA as the production environment. But I can't find this in the documentation anywhere.

[I work at Plaid] I don't know if we explicitly write down in the docs that the free Development tier isn't guaranteed to have the same SLA as the production environment, but if you're not paying Plaid there is no SLA (I mean, the usual recourse for an SLA breach is a rebate, but you can't give a rebate to someone who isn't paying you in the first place). That said, in practice the differences between the free and paid tiers for a personal finance app are not really such that someone doing a hobbyist app for personal use would notice them.

Correct me if I'm wrong but some of the banks don't work in developer mode at all (at least, it doesn't seem to work with Chase).

All banks work in the free Development environment, but for banks on OAuth, including Chase, you need to go through the Production approval vetting as a pre-requisite. Once you've been approved for Production (and if applicable for the given bank, gotten your security questionnaire approved as well -- I think Chase requires this) you can then access those banks in Development for free.

I would use this if there was an easy way to integrate it with plaid. (login once and keep data synced). This would be comparable to personal capital at that level.