Cognito

Cognito (cognitohq.com, operated by BlockScore, Inc.) is an identity verification, KYC, and AML compliance API provider that was backed by Y Combinator and Battery Ventures and acquired by Plaid in 2020. Its API turns a phone number, name, or ID document into a verified identity in under a minute, covering 209 countries and thousands of document types. Three developer products sit on one REST API: Identity (phone-first, frictionless verification), Flow (an all-in-one hosted / embeddable verification experience integrated in minutes with document and selfie checks), and Screening (watchlist, sanctions, and politically-exposed-person AML screening with daily re-scans across 20+ lists). The API is JSON:API (application/vnd.api+json), date-versioned via a Cognito-Version header, and authenticated with HTTP request signatures (HMAC-SHA256 over a digest of the body). It ships a sandbox host, signed webhooks, and client SDKs for seven languages.

Cognito publishes 1 API on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Identity, Identity Verification, KYC, and AML.

The Cognito catalog on APIs.io includes 1 event-driven AsyncAPI specification.

Cognito’s developer surface includes documentation, API reference, getting-started guide, engineering blog, pricing, signup flow, changelog, and 22 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

44.5/100 developing ▬ flat Agent 23/100 agent aware Front door AI 1/6 silent saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-09-25 · rubric v0.23.0

1 APIs

Company Identity Identity Verification KYC AML Compliance Fraud Prevention OnboardingWatchlist Screening

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-09-25 · rubric v0.23.0

Composite quality — 44.5/100 · developing

Contract Quality 8.3 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 10.1 / 17

Access Clarity 3.6 / 17

Operational Transparency 6.4 / 11

Contract Governance 1.9 / 10

Discoverability 6.2 / 9

Regulatory Posture 4.0 / 15

Agent readiness — 23/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 8 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7

Typed Event Surface 6 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.

The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/cognito: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

APIs 1

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Cognito Identity Verification API

REST API for identity verification, KYC, and AML watchlist/PEP screening. JSON:API media type (application/vnd.api+json), date-based versioning via the Cognito-Version header, a...

Event Specifications 1

AsyncAPI definitions for this provider's event-driven and streaming APIs.

Cognito Flow Webhooks

ASYNCAPI

Security Posture 3

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Cognito Authentication

httpSignature · 1 scheme

SECURITY

Cognito Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Cognito Vulnerability Disclosure

Hackerone · contact published

SECURITY

Resources

Get Started 4

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

DeveloperPortal

GettingStarted

SignUp

Sandbox

Documentation 2

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

APIReference

APIReference

Agent Surfaces 2

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

X-MCPServerCandidate

X-MCPServerCandidate

LLMsTxt

LLMsTxt

Design & Contract 7

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Webhooks

Conventions

Conformance

Lifecycle

ErrorCatalog

Components

DataModel

Scroll for all 7

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

Packages

Packages

Access & Security 4

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

Authentication

Authentication

VulnerabilityDisclosure

VulnerabilityDisclosure

Security

Security

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 4

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

StatusPage

ChangeLog

Deprecation

ChangeLog

Commercial 2

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Pricing

Pricing

PrivacyPolicy

PrivacyPolicy

Company 2

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

ParentCompany

ParentCompany

Source (apis.yml)

aid: cognito
name: Cognito
description: 'Cognito (cognitohq.com, operated by BlockScore, Inc.) is an identity verification, KYC, and AML compliance API
  provider that was backed by Y Combinator and Battery Ventures and acquired by Plaid in 2020. Its API turns a phone number,
  name, or ID document into a verified identity in under a minute, covering 209 countries and thousands of document types.
  Three developer products sit on one REST API: Identity (phone-first, frictionless verification), Flow (an all-in-one hosted
  / embeddable verification experience integrated in minutes with document and selfie checks), and Screening (watchlist, sanctions,
  and politically-exposed-person AML screening with daily re-scans across 20+ lists). The API is JSON:API (application/vnd.api+json),
  date-versioned via a Cognito-Version header, and authenticated with HTTP request signatures (HMAC-SHA256 over a digest of
  the body). It ships a sandbox host, signed webhooks, and client SDKs for seven languages.'
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/cognito/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: false
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source:
  - authentication
  - security
  - sandbox
  generated: '2026-09-03'
  method: derived
image: https://cognitohq.com/wp-content/themes/cognito/images/cognito-share.jpg
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- battery-ventures
- y-combinator
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: portfolio-lead
x-acquired-by: plaid
specificationVersion: '0.23'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-18'
tags:
- Company
- Identity
- Identity Verification
- KYC
- AML
- Compliance
- Fraud Prevention
- Onboarding
- Watchlist Screening
tags_raw:
- Company
- Identity
- Identity Verification
- KYC
- AML
- Compliance
- Fraud Prevention
- Onboarding
- Watchlist Screening
- Know Your Customer
apis:
- name: Cognito Identity Verification API
  description: 'REST API for identity verification, KYC, and AML watchlist/PEP screening. JSON:API media type (application/vnd.api+json),
    date-based versioning via the Cognito-Version header, and HTTP request-signature authentication (HMAC-SHA256). Core resources:
    profiles, identity_searches (and async search jobs), plus Flow sessions and Screening searches.'
  humanURL: https://cognitohq.com/docs
  baseURL: https://api.cognitohq.com
  tags:
  - Identity Verification
  - KYC
  - AML
  properties:
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://cognitohq.com/docs/reference
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://cognitohq.com/docs/identity/id-verification-api-quickstart
  - type: Authentication
    url: authentication/cognito-authentication.yml
  - type: Webhooks
    url: asyncapi/cognito-flow-webhooks.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://www.cognitohq.com/
- type: ParentCompany
  url: https://apis.io/providers/plaid/
  name: Plaid
  x-relationship: acquired
  x-evidence: ) is an identity verification, KYC, and AML compliance API provider that was backed by Y Combinator and Battery
    Ventures and acquired by Plaid in 2020.
- type: DeveloperPortal
  url: https://cognitohq.com/docs
- type: Documentation
  url: https://cognitohq.com/docs
- type: APIReference
  url: https://cognitohq.com/docs/reference
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://cognitohq.com/docs/identity/id-verification-api-quickstart
- type: Blog
  url: https://cognitohq.com/blog
- type: Pricing
  url: https://plaid.com/pricing/
- type: SignUp
  url: https://dashboard.plaid.com/signup/
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://cognitohq.com/privacy-statement
- type: StatusPage
  url: https://status.cognitohq.com/
- type: ChangeLog
  url: https://cognitohq.com/docs/guides/api-changelog
- type: Deprecation
  url: https://cognitohq.com/docs/guides/breaking-changes
- type: Webhooks
  url: asyncapi/cognito-flow-webhooks.yml
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/cognito-authentication.yml
- type: Conventions
  url: conventions/cognito-conventions.yml
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/cognito-conformance.yml
- type: Lifecycle
  url: lifecycle/cognito-lifecycle.yml
- type: ChangeLog
  name: Cognito changelog (artifact)
  url: changelog/cognito-changelog.yml
- type: Packages
  url: packages/cognito-packages.yml
- type: Sandbox
  url: sandbox/cognito-sandbox.yml
- type: ErrorCatalog
  url: errors/cognito-problem-types.yml
- type: VulnerabilityDisclosure
  url: security/cognito-vulnerability-disclosure.yml
- type: Security
  url: https://cognitohq.com/docs/guides/security
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/cognito-domain-security.yml
- type: X-MCPServerCandidate
  url: mcp/cognito-mcp.yml
  note: 'Renamed from MCPServer 2026-09-03 (roadmap#247): the manifest self-describes as status: candidate — a tool list derived
    from the published API contracts, not an existing server. The scorer already read the manifest and reported mcp_server
    correctly; the MCPServer type was crediting the artifact-type surfaces with a server that does not exist.'
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/cognito-llms.txt
- type: Components
  url: components/cognito-components.yml
- type: DataModel
  url: data-model/cognito-data-model.yml
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-19'
  status: backfilled
  pass: local-v1
  note: backfilled from .gitignore signal + verified work evidence

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