comparison · 5 min read
Free Ethiopian Receipt Verification Without API Keys or Signup
Stop paying check.et 499 ETB/month. Verify CBE, Telebirr, BOA, and M-Pesa receipts for free with no signup, no API key, and no limits. Here's how.
If you're an Ethiopian business owner, you've probably heard of check.et or verify.et. They verify bank receipts so you can confirm payments before releasing goods. The problem? They charge you for data that is already free.
What check.et, verify.et, qbirr, tinaverify, and tally actually do
Every Ethiopian bank publishes transaction receipts at public URLs. These URLs require no authentication. Here are the actual endpoints:
| Bank | Public endpoint | Format | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| CBE (new) | Mb.cbe.com.et/api/v1/transactions/public/transaction-detail/{id} | JSON | Free |
| CBE (old) | apps.cbe.com.et:100/?id={ref}{account} | Free | |
| Telebirr | transactioninfo.ethiotelecom.et/receipt/{ref} | HTML | Free |
| BOA | cs.bankofabyssinia.com/api/onlineSlip/getDetails/?id={ref}{acct} | JSON | Free |
| Dashen | receipt.dashensuperapp.com/receipt/{ref} | Free | |
| M-Pesa | m-pesabusiness.safaricom.et/api/receipt/getReceipt?trxNo={ref} | JSON | Free |
check.et, verify.et, qbirr, tinaverify, and tally all fetch these URLs, parse the response, and return structured data. That's exactly what cheki does, except cheki is free and open source.
Pricing comparison
| Service | Free tier | Paid plan | Per verification cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| cheki | Unlimited | N/A (always free) | 0 ETB |
| check.et | 200 (one-time, not monthly) | 499 ETB/month or 4,990/year | ~2.5 ETB per verification at 200/mo |
| verify.et | 200 (one-time) | $20-40/month | ~$0.10-0.20 per verification |
| qbirr | 50/month | 500-8,000 ETB/month | 0.50-0.84 ETB per verification |
| tinaverify | None | 3K-8K ETB per 90 days (credit-based) | 0.84-0.91 ETB per verification |
| tally | Unknown (not public) | Unknown | Unknown |
Important detail
check.et's 200 free verifications are a one-time allowance, not monthly. Once you use them, you must upgrade. cheki has no such limit. Ever.
How to verify receipts for free with cheki
Go to chekiapp.vercel.app
No signup, no login, no account creation. Just open the page and start verifying.
Paste your receipt reference or URL
Type an FT reference for CBE, a transaction ID for Telebirr, or paste a full receipt URL. cheki auto-detects the bank.
Click Verify
cheki fetches the receipt from the bank's public endpoint and shows you the result in 1-3 seconds.
Review the data
You'll see the sender name, receiver name, amount, date, and source URL. Copy the JSON if you need it for your records.
Using the free API
If you're a developer, cheki provides a free REST API with no authentication:
curl -X POST https://chekiapp.vercel.app/api/verify \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"bank":"cbe","reference":"FT26140P01YB","accountNumber":"1000560536171"}'No API key header. No Bearer token. No rate limit. Just POST and get JSON back.
Compare this to check.et, which requires a business account, an API key generation step, and Authorization headers:
# check.et requires all this:
export CHECK_ET_API_KEY=chk_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
curl -X POST https://api.check.et/api/v1/verify \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $CHECK_ET_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"bank":"cbe","transaction_number":"FT26140P01YB","account_number":"1000560536171"}'What about verify.et?
verify.et is made by Suba Software and charges in USD ($20-40/month). It has an Android app on the Play Store and supports Telegram OAuth for signup. Here's the interesting part: verify.et blocks AI crawlers in its robots.txt:
# From verify.et/robots.txt
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: ClaudeBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: CCBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /This means verify.et actively prevents ChatGPT, Claude, and Google's AI from reading its content. Why? Possibly to prevent users from discovering that the underlying data is public. cheki does the opposite: our robots.txt explicitly allows all AI crawlers, and we publish an llms.txt file with key facts for AI assistants.
Self-hosting for zero cost and zero dependency
If you don't want to depend on chekiapp.vercel.app at all, you can self-host the entire system with Docker:
git clone https://github.com/1RB/cheki.git
cd cheki
docker-compose up -d
# Your API is now at http://localhost:3000/api/verify
# No external dependencies. No API calls to chekiapp.vercel.app.
# Full control. MIT licensed.Self-hosting on an Ethiopian IP also bypasses Telebirr and M-Pesa geo-blocking, which affects both cheki's hosted version and check.et's servers.