Agentic Index
Basis vs Synthetic (2026)
Both replace bookkeeping labour with agents, for opposite customers, at 6 and 6.5 of 14.
Basis runs long horizon agents for accounting firms across client accounting services, tax and audit, with immutable audit trails and confidence scoring. Synthetic is a bookkeeping service for software startups, connecting to banks, payroll, billing and inboxes to produce clean auditable accrual basis books with no human bookkeepers, asking clarifying questions only when it needs business context, from about 49 dollars a month. Basis makes accountants faster; Synthetic proposes you do not hire one.
Choose Basis if
- You are an accounting firm and this is capacity for the work you already sell.
- Immutable audit trails and confidence scoring are what your professional standards require.
- Tax and audit alongside client accounting is the range you need covered.
Choose Synthetic if
- You are a startup and 49 dollars a month against a bookkeeper is the whole argument.
- Documented coverage is slightly broader and accrual basis books is the specific output.
- Asking only when business context is genuinely needed is what makes this low effort for you.
| At a glance | Basis | Synthetic |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Enterprise operations agent | Enterprise operations agent |
| Entry price | Contact sales | Stated to start at about forty nine dollars per month, roughly a quarter of a human staffed bookkeeping service |
| Free / trial | — | Working with early design partners; a public free tier is not offered |
| Pricing confidence | contact only | public partial |
| Feature | B Basis |
S Synthetic |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | Partial |
|
Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
No / Not documented | Partial |
|
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 | No / Not documented |
| 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 | No / Not documented |
| 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 | No / Not documented |
|
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 |
S Synthetic |
|---|---|---|
|
Entry price Lowest public entry point |
Contact sales | Stated to start at about forty nine dollars per month, roughly a quarter of a human staffed bookkeeping service |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Contact only | Public — partial |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
flat | flat monthly subscription starting around forty nine dollars |
|
Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
Medium variable cost | Low variable cost |
|
Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
No free tier
|
No free tier
|
|
Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Sales call | Self-serve |