Onfido vs Unit21

Neither company has publicly disclosed a valuation, making a definitive size comparison difficult. Onfido employs 500-1000 people, while Unit21 has 100-500 employees.

Onfido has raised more in total funding at $200M, compared to Unit21's $75M — a gap of $125M.

Onfido holds the higher Awaira Score at 68/100, compared to Unit21's 60/100. The Awaira Score is a composite metric factoring in valuation, funding, stage, team size, and market presence — a 8-point gap that reflects meaningful differences in scale or traction.

Onfido was founded by Husayn Kassai in 2012. Unit21 was founded by Trisha Kothari in 2018. Visit each company's profile on Awaira for a full founder biography.

Onfido: Onfido provided AI-powered identity verification services, using computer vision and machine learning to authenticate government-issued documents and biometric selfies for remote customer onboarding. The platform enabled banks, fintech companies, and regulated service providers to comply with Know Your Customer requirements without requiring in-person identity checks, processing identity verifications across more than 195 countries and supporting hundreds of document types.\n\nFounded in London in 2012, Onfido raised approximately $200 million from investors including SoftBank, TPG Growth, and Salesforce Ventures before being acquired by Entrust, the identity security company, in 2024 for approximately $400 million. At the time of acquisition, Onfido was processing hundreds of millions of identity checks annually for clients including HSBC, Revolut, and Bitstamp, making it one of the largest independent identity verification providers in the world.\n\nOnfido competed in the KYC and identity verification market alongside Jumio, Mitek, and AU10TIX, as well as large platform players including Experian and LexisNexis. The acquisition by Entrust gave Onfido access to a broader portfolio of physical and digital identity credentials and an enterprise sales channel with reach across government, banking, and enterprise security. The combined entity positions Entrust as a full-stack identity provider spanning physical documents, digital certificates, and AI-powered biometric verification. Unit21: Unit21 provides a fraud and risk operations platform that enables compliance and fraud teams at financial institutions and fintechs to build, test, and deploy transaction monitoring rules and machine learning models without requiring data science resources. The platform covers transaction fraud, account takeover, ACH and check fraud, and anti-money laundering (AML) case management in a unified workflow.\n\nThe company raised approximately 75 million USD and serves hundreds of financial services customers including neobanks, payment processors, crypto exchanges, and traditional banks looking to modernize legacy fraud operations with configurable, model-driven risk infrastructure. Unit21 no-code rule builder allows risk analysts to respond to new fraud patterns within hours rather than weeks.\n\nFinancial fraud losses in the United States exceed 10 billion USD annually and are growing as faster payment rails reduce the window for detection. Unit21 competes with legacy vendors like NICE Actimize and SAS as well as newer entrants including Sardine and Alloy, differentiating through its analyst-friendly interface and the speed with which risk teams can iterate on detection logic without engineering dependencies.

Onfido was founded first in 2012, giving it 6 years of additional market experience. Unit21 was founded later in 2018. In AI, even a year or two of head start can translate into significantly more training data, customer relationships, and institutional knowledge.

Onfido has approximately 500-1000 employees, while Unit21 has approximately 100-500. A larger team often signals higher revenue or venture backing, but in AI, smaller teams are increasingly capable of building at scale.

Yes, Onfido and Unit21 are direct competitors — both operate in the AI Security space and likely target overlapping customer segments. This comparison is especially relevant for buyers evaluating both platforms.