Identity Verification & KYC Pricing Compared

What the vendors actually publish

Identity verification is one of the few software categories where the sticker price and the invoice rarely resemble each other. Some vendors quote a per-check rate, some quote a monthly platform minimum, and two of the biggest names quote nothing at all until you talk to a salesperson.

Here is what was on each vendor's own pricing page, read on 2026-08-05. These are list prices on that date, and enterprise pricing is negotiated, so treat them as the starting line rather than the finish.

The published identity verification pricing splits into three shapes: cents-per-check vendors, monthly-platform-fee vendors, and quote-only vendors, and you cannot compare them until you convert everything into cost per verified user at your real volume.

Two notes on reading that table honestly. First, Didit's 0.33 USD figure and Veriff's 0.8 USD figure are both listed as per month on their pricing pages, while Sumsub and Stripe Identity explicitly attach their figures to a check or verification. Ask each vendor to confirm the billing unit in writing before you model anything, because a number that looks like a per-check rate and a number that looks like a subscription floor are not the same commitment. Second, only Didit's listing carries a free tier on that date. That matters more than it sounds when you are still prototyping.

Per-check pricing versus platform fees

The cheap end of this market sells you a verification. The expensive end sells you a system for deciding what to do with a verification.

Stripe Identity at 1.5 USD per verification/month (checked 2026-08-05, per stripe.com/pricing) is the clearest example of the first model. You call an API, a user scans a document and a selfie, you get a result. If you already run payments on Stripe, the integration cost is close to nothing, and there is no minimum to justify to finance. Sumsub at 1.35 USD per check/month (checked 2026-08-05, per sumsub.com/pricing) sits in the same per-unit family but bundles a broader compliance surface, including AML screening as separately priced check types.

Persona at 250 USD per month and iDenfy at 135 USD per month (both checked 2026-08-05, from withpersona.com/pricing and idenfy.com/pricing) sell a different thing. That monthly figure buys the orchestration layer: configurable verification flows, branching logic by risk score or country, a case management queue for your compliance team, audit trails a regulator will accept. If your compliance analysts currently live in a spreadsheet, that platform fee is often cheaper than the headcount it replaces.

Pick per-check pricing when verification is a one-time gate at signup, and pick a platform fee when verification is an ongoing workflow with humans making judgment calls.

A practical filter: if a failed verification just means the user cannot sign up, per-check pricing is fine. If a failed verification means somebody has to look at a passport photo, decide, document the decision, and possibly re-run it in six months, you want the workflow platform, and the monthly fee is the price of admission.

The quote-only problem: Jumio and Onfido

As of 2026-08-05, neither Jumio's product pages nor Onfido's identity verification page (now hosted under Entrust) published a price. You get a demo request form.

That is not automatically a bad sign. Enterprise identity verification genuinely does price on a matrix of country coverage, check types, volume tiers, and SLA. But it does change how you buy, and it changes your timeline. A quote-only evaluation adds a discovery call, a scoping call, a security review, and usually a procurement round trip before you see a number you can put in a budget. We have written more broadly about how to handle this in our piece on quote-only pricing, and the identity category is one of the worst offenders.

Treat quote-only vendors as a parallel track, not a replacement track: get a published-price vendor working in staging while the enterprise sales cycle runs, so you have a real fallback and real leverage.

When you do get on the call, ask for these specific things rather than "pricing":

• The per-verification rate at your projected monthly volume, and at half that volume
• Whether failed, abandoned, or re-attempted verifications are billable events
• The rate for each additional check type: AML screening, ongoing monitoring, proof of address, business verification
• Any annual platform fee or minimum commitment that sits on top of the per-check rate
• Overage handling if you exceed your tier, and whether unused volume rolls over
• Country-specific rates, since coverage in some markets prices differently
• What the price does at renewal if your volume grows

Get all of that in the order form. A verbal rate from an account executive is not a contract, and identity vendors reprice at renewal more aggressively than most SaaS categories. If Jumio's process stalls or the number comes back outside your range, our Jumio alternatives guide covers the vendors with published rates that cover similar ground.

Matching the price model to your stage

Volume changes the right answer completely, and the cheapest entry price is frequently the wrong choice at scale.

Early stage teams should optimise for the lowest floor and the fastest integration, while regulated teams at volume should optimise for the check types they will need in eighteen months.

Pre-launch and prototyping. Didit's free tier and 0.33 USD per month entry figure (checked 2026-08-05, per didit.me/pricing) is the lowest published commitment in the set. Veriff at 0.8 USD per month (checked 2026-08-05, per veriff.com/pricing) is also in the range where you do not need a budget approval to start. At this stage you are testing whether verification hurts conversion, not building a compliance program.

Already processing payments. If Stripe is your payment stack, Stripe Identity at 1.5 USD per verification/month (checked 2026-08-05) is the path of least resistance. One vendor, one contract, one dashboard, and your engineers already know the SDK. The tradeoff is a narrower check catalogue than the specialists offer. If your compliance obligations are limited to confirming a human with a valid document, that tradeoff costs you nothing.

Regulated and scaling. Once you are running AML screening, ongoing monitoring, and KYB on business customers, you want Sumsub, iDenfy, Persona, or one of the quote-only enterprise vendors. Here the headline rate matters less than the add-on rates, because the add-ons are where the invoice grows. A vendor with a low base check price and expensive sanctions screening can end up costing more than one with the reverse structure.

Identity as part of a larger auth stack. If verification is one piece of a login and account security project, price it alongside the rest of that stack rather than in isolation. Our auth category covers the adjacent tools, and the combined bill is what your CFO will see.

Costs that never appear on a pricing page

The published rate is the smallest part of the total. Four things reliably surprise buyers.

Conversion loss. A verification flow that drops a chunk of legitimate users at signup costs you more than any per-check rate. Test each vendor's flow on real devices, on a bad connection, with a worn passport and an expired-looking driving licence. The vendor with the higher per-check price and better completion often wins on unit economics.

Manual review labour. Every verification your automated flow cannot decide lands on a human. Ask each vendor what share of checks typically escalate for a customer like you, then price the analyst time. Platforms with strong case management reduce that labour, which is the actual argument for a monthly fee like Persona's or iDenfy's.

Country and document coverage gaps. Coverage looks universal in marketing copy and is uneven in practice. List your top markets, then ask for document type support and per-country rates for each one.

Integration and re-verification. Rebuilding a verification flow later is expensive engineering work, and some regulated businesses must re-verify existing users periodically. Ask whether re-verification bills at the full rate.

None of these show up on a pricing page, so build them into your evaluation as explicit line items rather than discovering them in month three.

How to run the comparison in a week

Pull your last three months of signup volume and your projected volume twelve months out. Model each vendor at both numbers using their published rate, and mark the quote-only vendors as unknown rather than guessing.

Then integrate two vendors in staging: the cheapest published option that covers your required check types, and the workflow platform you think you will eventually need. Run a few hundred real verifications through both. Measure completion rate, escalation rate, and time to decision. Those three numbers will tell you more than any feature matrix.

Finally, re-check the pricing pages before you sign. Everything here was verified on 2026-08-05, and identity vendors repackage often enough that a figure three months old is a starting point for a conversation, not a quote.