KYC pricing is deliberately opaque. The real cost breakdown — base checks, hidden fees, third-party pass-throughs, and the architecture tax that makes stacked vendors structurally more expensive.
KYC pricing is deliberately opaque. Here's the real cost breakdown — base checks, hidden fees, third-party pass-throughs, and the architecture tax that makes stacked vendors structurally more expensive.
Every buyer searches this before choosing a vendor. "How much does KYC cost?" The answer they get is a per-check price on a pricing page — $0.80 from one provider, $1.85 from another, "contact us" from most. That number is not the cost. It is the beginning of the cost.
The real cost of KYC includes the base verification check, sanctions and PEP screening (included or add-on?), ongoing monitoring (included or separate contract?), re-verification fees (what happens when a user needs to re-verify?), manual review charges (what does the provider charge when a check requires human review?), overage pricing (what happens when you exceed your contracted volume?), minimum commitments (what do you pay even if you verify zero users?), and integration and maintenance costs (engineering hours, SDK updates, API changes).
Most buyers discover these additional costs after signing the contract. This guide breaks down the real cost structure before you sign anything.
| Provider | Published Per-Check | Monthly Minimum | Annual Minimum | Free Trial | Resubmission Fees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sumsub | $1.85 | $149 (Basic), $299 (Compliance) | None published | 14 days / 50 checks | Not published |
| Veriff | $0.80 (self-serve) | None (self-serve) | Enterprise: custom | 15-day trial | No |
| Onfido (Entrust) | Quote-based | Quote-based | Yes (enforced) | Sandbox only | Yes |
| iDenfy | Pay-as-you-go | None | None | Free tier available | No |
| Jumio | Quote-based | Quote-based | Yes | Demo only | Not published |
| deepidv | Contact | Flexible | No | Custom demo | No |
These numbers are sourced from published pricing pages, G2 listings, and Capterra profiles. Enterprise pricing for all providers is negotiated and may differ significantly from published rates.
The per-check price at most providers covers document capture and OCR extraction, document template matching, biometric face matching, and basic liveness detection.
It typically does not cover sanctions screening (OFAC, EU, UN — often $0.10-$0.30 per screen), PEP screening (often bundled with sanctions or priced separately), AML transaction monitoring (separate product, separate contract), ongoing monitoring (periodic rescreening — often priced per-screen), enhanced due diligence (manual review for high-risk cases — often $2-$5 per case), address verification (separate check, $0.15-$0.50), and age verification (separate module at some providers).
A "$0.80 per check" that requires $0.25 in sanctions screening, $0.15 in PEP screening, and $0.10 in address verification is actually $1.30 per check. A "$1.85 per check" that includes all of these is actually $1.85. The all-in cost — not the headline price — is what matters.
Suggested read: How to Choose an IDV Provider: The 2026 Buyer's Guide
Most identity verification providers do not build every layer of their verification pipeline in-house. They assemble a pipeline from third-party APIs — using one vendor for document classification, another for OCR, another for face matching, another for liveness detection, and another for sanctions screening. Each third-party takes a margin. The stacking provider adds their margin on top.
This is the architecture tax. It is invisible on the pricing page but structural in the cost model.
A typical stacked verification check at a $1.85 headline price might break down as follows:
| Component | Third-Party Cost | Provider Margin | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Document classification | $0.15 | — | $0.15 |
| OCR extraction | $0.10 | — | $0.10 |
| Document authentication | $0.20 | — | $0.20 |
| Face matching | $0.15 | — | $0.15 |
| Liveness detection | $0.20 | — | $0.20 |
| Sanctions screening | $0.15 | — | $0.15 |
| Provider margin | — | $0.90 | $0.90 |
| Total | $0.95 | $0.90 | $1.85 |
In this model, 51% of the per-check cost is third-party pass-through. The provider's actual margin is 49%. If any downstream API raises prices — which they do — the provider must either absorb the increase (compressing their margin) or pass it to the customer.
An in-house-stack provider — one that builds document intelligence, biometric matching, deepfake detection, and sanctions screening internally — has no third-party pass-through costs. The entire per-check price is margin.
The structural floor price for an in-house provider is dramatically lower than for a stacked provider. At scale, this difference compounds into hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
deepidv builds every layer in-house — document intelligence, biometric matching, deepfake detection (including injection attack detection), behavioral risk scoring, and sanctions screening. Zero third-party API dependencies. Zero pass-through margins. The cost structure reflects technology investment, not margin stacking.
Suggested read: Technology — How deepidv's Verification Engine Works
When a verification fails — the document image is blurry, the selfie is poorly lit, or the system cannot match the face — the user must resubmit. Some providers charge for each resubmission as a separate verification check.
Onfido charges resubmission fees. Veriff does not. Sumsub's policy varies by plan. At a 15-20% resubmission rate (which is common for mobile verification), resubmission fees can add 15-20% to your effective per-check cost.
When automated verification cannot reach a confident decision, the check is routed to manual review — a human analyst evaluates the document and biometric. Manual review is expensive: $2-$5 per case at most providers, with some charging up to $8 for complex cases.
The perverse incentive is that providers with higher false-positive rates generate more manual reviews — and earn more revenue from them. A provider whose automation handles 95% of cases generates 5x more manual reviews (and 5x more manual review revenue) than a provider whose automation handles 99% of cases.
Ask your provider what percentage of checks go to manual review and what the per-review charge is. Multiply the rate by the percentage to calculate the expected manual review cost per 1,000 verifications.
Enterprise contracts often include volume commitments — a minimum number of checks per month or year. If you commit to 10,000 checks/month but only use 6,000, you pay for 10,000. The unused 4,000 checks are not rolled over.
This model penalizes businesses with variable verification volume — seasonal businesses, marketplaces with growth spurts, and startups in early scaling phases. The commitment was negotiated based on projected volume that may not materialize.
The per-check price does not include the engineering hours required to integrate the verification SDK, maintain the integration as the provider updates their API, handle edge cases and error states, and adapt to provider-driven changes (SDK updates, API deprecations, new authentication requirements).
These costs are not paid to the provider — they are paid to your engineering team. But they are real costs of the verification relationship. A provider with a complex, frequently-changing API costs more in engineering maintenance than a provider with a stable, well-documented API — even if the per-check price is identical.
| Provider | Per-Check | Add-Ons | Manual Review (5%) | Annual Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sumsub (Basic) | $1.85 | Included | ~$500 | ~$20,288 |
| Veriff (Self-Serve) | $0.80 | +$0.25 sanctions | ~$500 | ~$11,000 |
| Onfido | ~$2.50 (est.) | Included | ~$1,000 | ~$26,000 |
| deepidv | Contact | All included | Minimal (99%+ automation) | Contact |
| Provider | Per-Check (volume) | Add-Ons | Manual Review (5%) | Annual Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sumsub | ~$1.20 (negotiated) | Included | ~$5,000 | ~$125,000 |
| Veriff | ~$0.55 (negotiated) | +$0.20 | ~$5,000 | ~$80,000 |
| Onfido | ~$1.50 (negotiated) | Included | ~$10,000 | ~$160,000 |
| deepidv | Contact | All included | Minimal | Contact |
At this volume, the architecture tax becomes the dominant cost factor. A stacked provider passing through $0.95 in third-party costs per check is spending $475,000 annually on downstream APIs alone — before adding their own margin. An in-house provider spending $0.05 in compute per check is spending $25,000. The $450,000 difference is structural and permanent.
The cheapest per-check price does not always produce the lowest total cost. Total cost of ownership includes verification costs (per-check × volume + add-ons + manual review + resubmissions), engineering costs (integration, maintenance, edge case handling), fraud costs (losses from fraudulent identities that the verification system failed to catch), and compliance costs (the compliance team's time spent managing verification-related alerts, investigations, and reporting).
A provider that charges $0.80 per check but has a 2% false acceptance rate costs more in fraud losses than a provider that charges $1.50 per check with a 0.1% false acceptance rate. The $0.70 per-check savings is consumed by the fraud losses many times over.
The same logic applies to deepfake detection. A provider without injection attack detection charges less per check — but every injection attack that succeeds costs the platform in fraud losses, regulatory risk, and reputational damage. The "savings" from a cheaper provider without adequate detection is an illusion.
Suggested read: Deepfake Detection for KYC: The Complete Guide
Published prices range from $0.80 (Veriff self-serve) to $2.50+ (Onfido enterprise). The all-in cost — including sanctions screening, PEP screening, manual review, and resubmissions — is typically 30-50% higher than the headline per-check price.
Because 50%+ of their per-check cost is third-party API pass-through that does not decrease with volume. An in-house provider's marginal cost is primarily compute, which scales efficiently.
Resubmission fees, manual review charges, minimum commitments with use-it-or-lose-it terms, sanctions/PEP screening as add-ons, and engineering maintenance for complex or frequently-changing APIs.
Rarely. Total cost of ownership includes fraud losses from missed threats, engineering maintenance, and compliance team time. A provider with lower detection accuracy costs more in fraud losses than the per-check savings.
Model at current volume AND at 10x projected volume. Show all-in cost per check (including add-ons and manual review), not just the headline price. Investors evaluate whether your verification costs decrease as a percentage of revenue as you scale.
See pricing or book a demo to model deepidv's all-in cost against your current provider.
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