Agentic Index
Basis vs Byron (2026)
Both sell agents to accounting firms and they cover different seasons.
Basis runs long horizon agents across end to end client accounting services, tax and audit work, with immutable audit trails and confidence scoring. Byron is tax preparation specifically, automating the CPA workflow from client document intake to review ready workpapers and returns, with every number source linked and every step gated by human approval, documenting 9 of 14 against 6. Byron's source linking and mandatory approval gate is the stronger governance story; Basis covers more of the year.
Choose Basis if
- Client accounting services and audit are in scope, not just the tax season crunch.
- Long horizon agents running work over weeks fits how your engagements actually run.
- Confidence scoring is how you intend to decide what a human looks at.
Choose Byron if
- Tax preparation is the bottleneck and season capacity is the business problem.
- Documented coverage is materially broader and every step gated by human approval suits a CPA firm's risk posture.
- Source linked numbers are what makes review fast enough to be worth it.
| At a glance | Basis | Byron |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Enterprise operations agent | Enterprise operations agent |
| Entry price | Contact sales | Not public; sold to CPA firms through a demo, typically under annual subscription agreements |
| Free / trial | — | Demo led evaluation; no public free tier |
| Pricing confidence | contact only | contact only |
| Feature | B Basis |
B Byron |
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
|
Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
| Knowledge & context | ||
|
Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
Partial | Partial |
| Control & trust | ||
|
Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
No / Not documented | Full / Explicit |
|
Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
No / Not documented | Partial |
| Solution readiness | ||
|
Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
Partial | Partial |
| Platform extensibility | ||
|
Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
|
APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
No / Not documented | Partial |
|
Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
No / Not documented | Partial |
| Specialist automation | ||
|
Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing | B Basis |
B Byron |
|---|---|---|
|
Entry price Lowest public entry point |
Contact sales | Not public; sold to CPA firms through a demo, typically under annual subscription agreements |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Contact only | Contact only |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
flat | annual subscription for CPA firms, quoted through sales |
|
Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
Medium variable cost | Medium variable cost |
|
Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
No free tier
|
No free tier
|
|
Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Sales call | Sales call |