Runtime vs Lindy

Lindy and Runtime at a glance

Lindy is a no-code platform for building AI agents and assistants. People use it for email triage, meeting scheduling, lead handling, and other everyday tasks, with integrations across common business apps.

Runtime is the AI agent harness for payment teams. From payment ops to risk, compliance, and support, anyone on the team can build agents that work their queues on their own computers inside your cloud, called from Slack, Teams, email, SMS, or voice, with approvals and a full audit trail.

Lindy is for individuals and small teams automating everyday work. Runtime is for payment and risk operations where the data is regulated and actions move money.

How they differ

Domain depth in payments

Lindy is general-purpose by design. Runtime is built for money movement: held payouts, ACH returns, disputes, reserves, and recon breaks. Agents follow your ops team's SOPs and work across your ledger, processor, bank files, and tickets, including portals with no API through a browser on their own computer.

Your cloud, your sandbox, your models

Lindy runs as a hosted platform. Runtime runs agent computers in your AWS, GCP, or Azure account, or fully self-hosted, with your own sandbox provider if you have one. You bring any model, including open-weight models in your cloud for PCI and PII work, with routing and fallbacks across providers.

Approvals and an audit trail for money movement

Runtime agents start read-only. Before releasing a payout or booking a ledger entry, a person approves in Slack, Teams, or the dashboard. Every run records the trigger, every query and tool call, the approval, the cost, and the result, exportable for an auditor or sponsor bank.

An engineer with a payments background

Instead of self-serve setup, Runtime pairs you with a forward-deployed AI engineer who has built payment and fintech infrastructure. They map your processes, build the first agents with your team, set up guardrails, and train your admins.

Where Lindy is stronger

• Setup speed. No-code assistants in minutes.
• Everyday tasks. Email triage, scheduling, and lead handling out of the box.
• Business app integrations. Connects to common SaaS tools.
• Individual use. Works well for one person or a small team building for itself.

Which should you choose

Choose Lindy if

• You want AI assistants for email, calendars, and everyday tasks
• An individual or small team is building for itself
• Setup speed matters more than control
• Sensitive financial data isn't involved

Choose Runtime if

• You run payment, risk, or finance operations with growing queues
• Card data or PII has to stay in your cloud, with models you choose
• You need approvals on money movement and an exportable audit trail
• You want an engineer who knows payments to help you roll out

Frequently asked questions

Is Lindy good for fintech?

Lindy is a quick way to build AI assistants for email triage, scheduling, lead handling, and everyday tasks. Fintech operations need data to stay in your cloud, approvals before money moves, and a record a sponsor bank will accept, which Runtime provides.

Can Lindy run in my own cloud?

Lindy is a hosted platform. Runtime runs agent computers in your AWS, GCP, or Azure account, or fully self-hosted, with your own sandbox provider and models if you prefer.

What is the best Lindy alternative for payment teams?

For personal productivity and everyday tasks, Lindy works well. For payment, risk, and finance queues where agents investigate across your ledger and processor, Runtime is built for the job.

Is Runtime no-code?

Ops teams build Runtime agents from their SOPs in plain English, without writing code. Engineering controls credentials, access, and guardrails, and a forward-deployed engineer helps build the first agents.