Tool profile
Kintsugi: cost, fit and limits
Kintsugi is a sales tax compliance platform made by Kintsugi, based in San Francisco, that monitors exposure, calculates tax, registers sellers and files returns in the United States and Canada, with an AI assistant and tax staff behind the automation.
What to know first
Kintsugi separates watching from acting. Exposure monitoring, threshold alerts and a historical liability audit cost nothing on every plan, while registrations and filings are the paid work. Starter charges per completed action, which suits a seller who owes tax in a handful of states, and Scale swaps that for a flat monthly price. Premium adds VDA management and API access. The pages read show no exact Scale or Premium prices, so budgeting beyond Starter starts with a quote.
Kintsugi at a glance
| Maker | Kintsugi, United States |
|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes |
| Entry price | $75 per action for Starter, $0 for monitoring only |
| API access | Yes |
| Category | Best AI Tax Compliance Software in 2026, rank 1 of 11 |
| Website | trykintsugi.com |
Who Kintsugi is best for
Sellers sizing up their exposure
Free monitoring covers the United States and more than 100 countries, so a founder can learn where thresholds were crossed before spending anything on registrations or filings.
Stores with a few states to file in
The $75 per action Starter plan charges only for registrations, filings, amended returns, back filings or deregistrations that Kintsugi completes, which keeps costs tied to real workload.
NetSuite and Dynamics 365 shops
Scale lists real-time tax calculation for QuickBooks, NetSuite and Dynamics 365, and the home page mentions Vertex's enterprise tax engine for NetSuite customers.
Companies with old unfiled periods
Back filing and voluntary disclosure work are named services, and Premium has the Tax Ops team manage VDAs on an annual contract.
Kintsugi plans and pricing
| Plan | Price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0, no credit card | Nexus monitoring for the US and 100+ countries, historical liability audits, threshold alerts, AI product categorization, address validation, the Kin assistant and CSV imports. No registration or filing. |
| Starter | $75 per action | Registrations, filings, amended returns, back filings and deregistrations in the US and Canada, plus autoregister, filing autopilot where supported, Kintsugi Mail, reports and 24/7 live chat. |
| Scale | Custom flat monthly price | One monthly fee for registrations and filings, EU, UK and 100+ country compliance priced by country, notice handling, a dedicated onboarding manager and the Kintsugi Guarantee. |
| Premium | Custom flat monthly price | Scale plus VDA management, advanced exemption certificate management, analytics, API and SDK access, SSO, a dedicated account team and SLA-backed support. |
Checked November 2026.
What Kintsugi does
- Product classification
- The home page lists AI classification of products, including mixed carts, so a bundle of taxable and exempt items can be split. Whether a person reviews each classification was not stated.
- Address validation
- Addresses are checked down to the local district, which matters in states where special districts add rates on top of the state and county levels.
- Kin assistant
- Kin is an AI assistant grounded in the transactions you import. It answers questions about your own exposure rather than general tax law, according to the home page description.
- Mail and notices
- Kintsugi Mail handles incoming tax mail on Starter and above, and Scale adds notice handling by Kintsugi staff, which moves letters from authorities out of a founder's inbox.
- Mobile app, MCP server and API
- Besides the dashboard, the home page lists a mobile app, an MCP server and a custom API, so an assistant or internal tool can query tax data.
How Kintsugi handles your data
Kintsugi's home page states SOC 2 Type II, monitored through Drata, and shows a NetSuite SuiteCloud Developer Network Partner badge. The pricing page states that all integrations are included. The privacy policy page could not be opened, so the vendor's policy was not checked for hosting region, retention or whether customer data trains AI models. The company address on its home page is 2261 Market St in San Francisco.
Where Kintsugi falls short in practice
- Filing starts at Starter. The Free plan will tell you that you owe tax somewhere, but it will not register or file. A seller who crosses several thresholds at once needs to budget per action quickly, because each state registration counts separately.
- EU and UK sit in custom tiers. Starter covers the US and Canada only. EU, UK and the 100+ country compliance on Scale is priced by country on a quote, so a European seller cannot compute the cost from the page.
- Premium work contracts annually. Paid plans are month-to-month, but back filing and VDA work on Premium is contracted annually, which is a longer commitment than the headline terms suggest.
Works with
Alternatives to Kintsugi
Kintsugi: common questions
How is an action counted on Kintsugi's Starter plan?
The pricing page defines an action as a registration, filing, back filing, re-file, amended return or deregistration that Kintsugi completes for you, at $75 each. A seller filing monthly returns in five states would therefore generate five actions a month, so the page's example of cost depends on filing frequency.
Does Kintsugi charge per transaction?
The pricing page says no transaction fees, no onboarding fees and no year-end overage, and that every integration is included. Exposure monitoring and CSV imports are free on all plans. The cost comes from actions on Starter or the flat monthly fee on Scale and Premium.
Which AI features does Kintsugi describe?
The home page names product classification including mixed carts, address validation to the local district, exposure monitoring with threshold alerts and the Kin assistant. It also says tax experts handle judgment calls such as VDA decisions, so the AI is positioned as support to human review.
Is Kintsugi certified for security?
The home page states SOC 2 Type II, monitored through Drata. It did not list ISO 27001, hosting regions or a retention schedule on the pages read. A buyer who needs the report itself should request it from the vendor, since the badge alone is a claim.
Can Kintsugi replace an ERP tax engine?
For NetSuite, Dynamics 365 and QuickBooks users, the Scale plan lists real-time tax calculation, and the home page says NetSuite customers get Vertex's enterprise engine. Whether that matches an existing Avalara or Vertex setup in rate accuracy was not testable from the pages read.