A quick note before we start: everything below about Sumsub comes from public sources (their website, press coverage, and product pages) gathered in July 2026. Vendors change pricing, features, and positioning often, so if a detail matters to your decision, confirm it directly with Sumsub.
Sanction Scanner is the stronger fit if you want screening, transaction monitoring, fraud detection, and customer risk scoring running on one AI-native platform with its own risk intelligence built in. Sumsub makes sense mainly when the job is fast, high-conversion identity verification at onboarding, with AML screening handled inside the same suite through partner-supplied risk data.
We get asked about Sumsub a lot, usually by fintechs and crypto platforms that already use them for onboarding and want to know whether to also bring in a dedicated AML and monitoring layer, or whether Sumsub covers that ground on its own. It's a fair question, because the two companies aren't built to do the same job. Sumsub grew out of identity verification: proving that the person signing up is who they say they are, fast, with strong document and liveness checks. Sanction Scanner grew out of AML compliance: screening, transaction and fraud monitoring, and customer risk scoring, all running on one platform with its own data and models.
This page compares both on the areas compliance and risk teams usually care about: where the AI actually sits, whose risk intelligence powers the screening, transaction monitoring, fraud detection, KYB, integration effort, and who each platform suits. We'll be direct about which scenario belongs to which vendor.
What is Sanction Scanner?
We built Fusion, our platform, around a simple idea: financial crime teams shouldn't have to stitch together five vendors to get one clean picture of risk. Fusion puts AML and name screening, transaction monitoring, transaction screening, fraud detection, ongoing monitoring, KYB, and customer risk assessment in one system, with case management tying it together.
The AI in Fusion isn't bolted onto one module and left there. It works across all of them: cross-module analysis that connects a screening hit to a transaction pattern to a risk score, entity resolution that cuts down duplicate and near-duplicate matches, and AI agents that draft case summaries and flag what an analyst should look at first. That's what we mean when we say the platform is AI-native. It's not a feature you turn on. It's how the whole system reasons about risk, which is also why false positives tend to drop once a team is running on it. One neobank cut theirs by 70%, detailed in our case studies.
Just as important for this particular comparison: the risk intelligence is ours. We screen against sanctions, PEP, and adverse media lists pulled from 3,000+ sources across 220+ countries, refreshed roughly every 15 minutes, on our own platform, with our own matching engine on top.
Integration usually takes hours rather than weeks, the API averages around 250ms per response with 99.95%+ uptime, and two-way webhooks keep case status in sync with whatever core system a client runs. We hold ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certifications, run on Azure, and are GDPR compliant. G2 named us a Leader for Summer 2026. Our clients are mostly medium and enterprise banks, neobanks, payment and e-money institutions, fintechs, crypto businesses, insurers, and investment firms, more than 800 of them at this point, including BMW, Stellantis, Generali, Zurich, Delivery Hero, QNB, Kuveyt Türk, iyzico, and UNOPS.
What is Sumsub?
Sumsub started in 2015 and has grown into one of the more recognizable names in identity verification and KYC, now serving more than 4,000 companies across fintech, crypto, trading, transportation, e-commerce, and gaming, including names like Bitpanda, Wirex, Bybit, and TransferGo. Its home turf is onboarding: proving who a user is, quickly and with as little friction as possible, using AI-driven document checks, biometric liveness verification, and support for a very wide range of ID document types across 220+ countries.
That focus shows, and it's a real strength for the job it targets. Teams pick Sumsub because sign-up conversion matters as much as compliance does, and Sumsub's verification flow is built to feel fast on a phone screen, which crypto exchanges and consumer fintech apps care about a great deal. The company's in-house AI investment follows the same center of gravity: document and liveness models, the Summy AI copilot for review workflows, and, in June 2026, an MCP integration that lets AI agents configure the platform from a compliance policy document.
The AML side works differently. Sumsub offers AML screening, KYB, and transaction monitoring in its suite, but since a strategic partnership announced in March 2026, the risk intelligence behind that screening is supplied by ComplyAdvantage: their Mesh platform now serves as the foundational intelligence layer powering Sumsub's AML screening across its KYC, KYB, and transaction monitoring products. That's a build-versus-buy call an identity company can reasonably make. It also means that on the AML layer, Sumsub is a delivery channel for another vendor's intelligence rather than the owner of it, which matters if AML depth is the thing you're evaluating.
Feature comparison
| Area | Sanction Scanner | Sumsub |
| AI placement | AI-native across every module: screening, monitoring, fraud, and risk scoring share the same models and entity resolution | AI is central to identity verification (document, liveness, deepfake detection) and platform automation; AML screening intelligence supplied by ComplyAdvantage Mesh (March 2026 partnership) |
| Sanctions, PEP, adverse media screening | 3,000+ sources, 220+ countries, refreshed roughly every 15 minutes, on our own platform | Screening runs on ComplyAdvantage's Mesh risk intelligence layer within Sumsub's suite |
| Transaction monitoring | Native module built into the same platform as screening and risk scoring | Available as part of the suite, powered by the same partner intelligence layer |
| Fraud detection | Built-in fraud detection sharing signals with screening and monitoring | Fraud and device intelligence tools focused on document, deepfake, and synthetic identity fraud |
| KYB and customer risk scoring | KYB and customer risk assessment run in the same case view as screening and monitoring | Modular KYB covering registry checks, document extraction, and UBO verification, generally sold as a companion to KYC |
| Automation | AI agents assist with case summaries, profile analysis, and decision support across modules | Strong automation in the verification flow; Summy AI copilot for reviews; MCP-based agent configuration (June 2026) |
| API and integration time | Typically hours, ~250ms average response, 99.95%+ uptime, two-way webhooks | Widely used SDKs and APIs; effort varies by how many modules a client adopts at once |
| Data coverage and refresh | 3,000+ sources, 220+ countries, ~15 minute refresh, figures published | 220+ countries for identity documents; AML data refresh follows the ComplyAdvantage layer, confirm specifics with Sumsub |
| No-code usability | No-code dashboards for configuring rules and reviewing cases | Verification flows configurable through a dashboard; deeper AML rule tuning may need more setup |
| Certifications | ISO 27001, ISO 9001, GDPR compliant, hosted on Azure | Publishes its own compliance and security certifications; check current status directly |
| Pricing | Custom quote based on modules and volume; no public price list | Plan and volume based; confirm current pricing with Sumsub |
| Target segment | Medium and enterprise banks, neobanks, payment institutions, fintechs, crypto, insurance, investment firms | Fintechs, crypto exchanges, trading platforms, and other high-growth digital businesses prioritizing fast onboarding |
| Support | Dedicated account and implementation support as part of onboarding | Support structure varies by plan; confirm current SLAs with Sumsub |
Which one when?
If the priority is a single AML platform where screening, transaction monitoring, fraud detection, and customer risk scoring all feed into the same case and the same AI models, with the risk intelligence owned end to end by one vendor, Fusion is the stronger choice. That matters most for banks, payment institutions, and larger fintechs that need one audit trail and one risk picture instead of reconciling outputs from separate tools, and where reducing false positives across the whole compliance workflow, not just at onboarding, has a direct effect on analyst workload.
Sumsub is the practical choice for a different, common job: an early-stage fintech or crypto company whose most urgent problem is getting real users through identity verification quickly, without losing them to a clunky sign-up flow. If document and liveness verification, broad global ID coverage, and a fast, well-tested onboarding SDK are the top priorities, and AML screening can live inside that same onboarding suite for now, that's the job Sumsub was built for. Plenty of teams start there and layer in deeper monitoring as they scale.
Some teams end up using both: Sumsub at the identity verification front door, and a dedicated platform like ours handling ongoing screening, monitoring, and risk scoring once a customer is onboarded. That's not an unusual setup, and it's worth considering if fast onboarding and deep ongoing monitoring are pulling in different directions at your company.
The bottom line
Sumsub built its name on making identity verification fast and painless, and if onboarding conversion is your most urgent problem, that's the problem it solves. Our platform is built for the other side of the lifecycle: one place to run screening, transaction and fraud monitoring, and customer risk scoring, with AI and risk intelligence that are ours end to end rather than assembled from partners. If that unified setup is what your compliance team needs, request a demo or talk to our sales team and we'll walk through how Fusion would fit into your stack.
