RiskSonnar vs Unit21
Risk + fraud + AML for fintechs with a low-code rule builder and case management; growing platform breadth.
Side-by-side feature matrix
Sixteen dimensions, one row each. Where Unit21 has the stronger story we mark the row as their advantage; where we win we mark ours; where the products are equivalent we mark parity.
| Dimension | Unit21 | RiskSonnar |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing transparency | Pricing via sales conversation; tiers not publicly listed. | Public pricing at /pricing — Starter / Pro / Enterprise with EUR amounts in plain view. |
| Deployment time | Days to weeks for a basic deployment; standard for the cohort. | Sandbox spins up in minutes at /sandbox; production tenant onboarded in days, not quarters. |
| Audit verifiability | Activity log and audit trail within the platform; integrity attested by vendor, not externally re-executable. | Hash-chained per-event receipts; manifest SHA-256 verifiable at /v1/compliance/evidence-pack. |
| No-code scenarios | Low-code rule builder is a marquee feature — mature, well-documented. | No-code scenario studio at /scenarios/new (csn_* IDs) with JSON export + version history. |
| Hash-chained receipts | Not part of the platform. | Every state-changing action emits a hash-linked receipt — tamper-evident by construction. |
| Sandbox availability | Demo via sales; no public self-serve sandbox. | Public synthetic-tenant sandbox at /sandbox, 60-minute sessions, no signup. |
| Public trust dashboard | Not offered. | Opt-in public trust dashboard at /trust/<slug> — integrity status visible to anyone. |
| Federated-learning support | Not customer-controlled federated learning. | Federated-learning support on the roadmap (rev-54); cross-tenant typology sharing without raw data movement. |
| Perpetual KYC | Risk-rating-and-monitoring features; KYC re-screen typically via integration partners. | Perpetual KYC included in Pro+: continuous re-screen on watchlist deltas and PEP/adverse-media changes. |
| LLM SAR drafting | SAR templates and narrative tooling; LLM-assisted drafting present in newer releases. | LLM SAR drafting in-product (MLRO signs) with the model output appended to the audit chain. |
| Crypto screening | Through partner integrations; not a native crypto-analytics module. | Crypto screening at /watch/crypto — chain-analytics signals fused with off-chain identity. |
| Open API | Public REST API for cases, alerts, entities; well-adopted by fintech engineering teams. | OpenAPI 3.1 spec public; cockpit and SDKs build against the same surface a customer integrates with. |
| Regulator-replay (byte-exact) | Not offered. | Regulator-replay endpoint reproduces any decision byte-exactly from the chained inputs. |
| Self-hosting option | SaaS only; deployment region selectable. | Self-hosted tenancy available on Enterprise (BYO KMS + PrivateLink). |
| Source available | Proprietary closed-source. | Source-available components published under the RiskSonnar evaluation license. |
| License model | Annual subscription with tiered seat + volume bands. | Annual subscription with public list-price brackets; no per-feature lock behind quotes. |
When to pick Unit21
Pick Unit21 if your fraud + AML ops team likes the low-code rule builder and you want a mature, fintech-adjacent platform with a deep customer base in US neobanking. Their UX has had years of polish, the rule-builder ergonomics are genuinely good, and you can be productive on the platform fast.
When to pick RiskSonnar
Pick RiskSonnar if verifiability is a board-level concern, you operate (or plan to operate) cross-jurisdiction in Europe, and you want a sandbox you can hit without a sales conversation. Our hash-chain + public trust dashboard turn audit posture into a marketing asset; few of our competitors can say the same.
“We migrated from Unit21 to RiskSonnar because our auditors asked us to prove integrity without trusting a vendor log. The hash-chain made that conversation 20 minutes long instead of three weeks.”
Next steps
The fastest way to evaluate RiskSonnar against Unit21 is to spin up a synthetic-data sandbox and verify the claims yourself — audit chain, scenario authoring, screening, cases, SAR drafting. Sixty minutes, no signup.