Lakera Guard vs OpenAI Moderation
Agent-native side-by-side. Scores are curated estimates on a 0–10 scale. Lock-in: higher = worse. Prefer JTBD picks via /api/decide when choosing for a job.
| Dimension | Lakera Guard | OpenAI Moderation |
|---|---|---|
| Overall | 8.2 | 8.6 |
| Capability fit | 8.8 | 8.2 |
| Price / performance | 7.8 | 9.8 |
| Latency / reliability | 8.4 | 9.2 |
| Developer & agent DX | 9.0 | 9.4 |
| Privacy / data retention | 8.8 | 7.5 |
| Lock-in risk (higher = worse) | 5.5 | 5.5 |
| Maturity / track record | 8.0 | 9.5 |
| Pricing | As of 2026-09-14 (platform.lakera.ai/pricing): Community $0 — 10k requests/mo, 8k-token prompt cap, SaaS EU residency, SOC2/GDPR. Enterprise sales-gated — flexible volume, configurable prompt size, SaaS or self-host, SSO… | As of 2026-09-14: Free moderation endpoint — omni-moderation-latest for text+images (images ≤20 MB). Also inline moderation on Responses/Chat Completions via moderation.model. Categories include hate, harassment, self-ha… |
| Tagline | Depot pick for a dedicated prompt-injection firewall in front of any LLM. NeMo when you need programmable… | Default first-pass content filter for agent I/O. Pair with Llama Guard (Groq) or NeMo Guardrails when you… |
Lakera Guard
Depot pick for a dedicated prompt-injection firewall in front of any LLM. NeMo when you need programmable rails; OpenAI Moderation for free taxonomy flags. Check Point acquisition is real — product still has a public API. Strengths: Purpose-built prompt-injection / jailbreak / leakage API with sub-50ms narrative; Real
Strengths
- Purpose-built prompt-injection / jailbreak / leakage API with sub-50ms narrative
- Real free Community tier for eval
- EU-native residency on the free plan
Weaknesses
- Paid SKU is sales-gated (no Pro list price)
- Post-Check Point packaging/quote path may slow indie procurement
- Not a full policy engine like NeMo Guardrails
OpenAI Moderation
Default first-pass content filter for agent I/O. Pair with Llama Guard (Groq) or NeMo Guardrails when you need open/custom policies. Strengths: Free, fast, zero infra; Text + image multimodal classification; Inline with generation APIs.
Strengths
- Free, fast, zero infra
- Text + image multimodal classification
- Inline with generation APIs
Weaknesses
- Fixed OpenAI taxonomy — not your policy engine
- Cannot self-host or fine-tune categories
- Audio not classified
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