# AgentGate vs Granite Guardian

> Granite Guardian scores 60.1 (C) to AgentGate's 48.5 (D) for policy enforcement. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentgate-vs-granite-guardian
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- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentgate-vs-granite-guardian.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
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- Updated: 2026-10-15

Granite Guardian scores 60.1 (C) on agent readiness against AgentGate's 48.5 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do policy enforcement.

- AgentGate: grade D, 48.5/100, rank #883 of 1094. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/agentgate.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/agentgate.json
- Granite Guardian: grade C, 60.1/100, rank #563 of 1094. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/granite-guardian.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/granite-guardian.json
- Best guardrails and safety filters for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/guardrails/index.md
- All 132 guardrails comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/guardrails/index.md

## Which one, for what

### AgentGate (D)

Good for: A team that wants a self-hosted check between an agent and its shell, database or webhook tools, with a human approval queue.

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- Free to start without a card
- Open source

Watch for: Agent endpoints need no key unless `AG_AGENT_KEY` is set, the proxy binds 0.0.0.0:8080, and the dashboard key defaults to `dev-key-123`

### Granite Guardian (C)

Good for: A team with a GPU that wants one English-language judge for harm, jailbreaks, RAG groundedness, function-call checks and house rules, under a permissive licence with no gate.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 56 against 44
- Schema & documentation, 60 against 47
- Agent ergonomics, 69 against 53
- Security & auth, 58 against 49
- Maintenance & community, 47 against 28
- Transparency & trust, 70 against 56

Watch for: Trained and tested on English only, per the model card


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | AgentGate | Granite Guardian | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 44 | 56 | Granite Guardian +12 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 47 | 60 | Granite Guardian +13 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 53 | 69 | Granite Guardian +16 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 49 | 58 | Granite Guardian +9 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 60 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 28 | 47 | Granite Guardian +19 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 56 | 70 | Granite Guardian +14 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **48.5 · D** | **60.1 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | AgentGate | Granite Guardian |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | Model API |
| Vendor | Mohit Singh (mohitdebian) | IBM |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Apache 2.0 for the weights and the repository |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | none | 2026-04-29 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models |  |  |
| Terms restrict automated access |  |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  |  |
| Popularity | 0 stars | 182 stars |

## Verdicts

**AgentGate.** An agent or its host can send each tool call to one REST endpoint, or wrap an MCP server, and get allow, deny or ask from a local classifier and a YAML policy, with an audit log and approval queue. The project is three days old, auth is off by default, and no detection accuracy is published.

**Granite Guardian.** One ungated Apache 2.0 model judges harm, jailbreaks, RAG groundedness, function-call errors and custom criteria, with signed weights and published evaluation code. It is trained and tested on English only, each call checks one criterion, the 4.1 prompt format differs from 3.x, and IBM's watsonx.ai lists only the deprecated 3.0 model.

## Before you call either

### AgentGate

1. Create a session with the user's real goal first. The goal-alignment head scores every later call against it
2. Pass earlier tool results in `history_override` with `untrusted: true` for web or email content, or the injection head sees only the action
3. On `ask`, stop and tell the user the `decision_id`. Polling `/v1/decisions/:id` needs the dashboard key
4. Treat `allow_with_checkpoint` as allow and keep the `checkpoint_id` for an undo
5. Expect HTTP 404 with `not_found` for an unknown session and 401 when the owner has set an agent key

### Granite Guardian

1. Append the `<guardian>` block as the final user message, with the mode line, `### Criteria:` and `### Scoring Schema:`. Copy the strings from the model card, because no package builds them
2. Use the no-think instruction for gating and parse `<score>`. Think mode writes a reasoning trace first, and the card's examples allow up to 2,048 output tokens
3. Treat `yes` as the criterion being met, which for built-in criteria means the risk is present. Treat a missing `<score>` tag as a failed check
4. Pass retrieved text through `documents=` and tool schemas through `available_tools=` in `apply_chat_template`, not inside the message text
5. Under Ollama, set `num_ctx` in the request options. IBM's docs say the default context is short and long requests are truncated

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, AgentGate or Granite Guardian?

Granite Guardian scores 60.1 (C) on agent readiness against AgentGate's 48.5 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

### Do AgentGate and Granite Guardian need an API key?

Neither needs a key.

### Can an agent call AgentGate and Granite Guardian without installing anything?

AgentGate runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. No hosted endpoint is listed for Granite Guardian.

### Are AgentGate and Granite Guardian open source?

AgentGate is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for Granite Guardian.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentgate-vs-granite-guardian.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentgate-vs-granite-guardian.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "agentgate", "b": "granite-guardian"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare agentgate granite-guardian`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/agentgate.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/granite-guardian.json

## Other comparisons with AgentGate or Granite Guardian

- [Amazon Bedrock Guardrails vs Granite Guardian](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-bedrock-guardrails-vs-granite-guardian.md)
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- [AgentGate vs Amazon Bedrock Guardrails](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentgate-vs-amazon-bedrock-guardrails.md)
- [AgentGate vs Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentgate-vs-azure-ai-content-safety.md)
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- [AgentGate vs Google Cloud Model Armor](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentgate-vs-google-model-armor.md)
- [AgentGate vs Guardrails AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentgate-vs-guardrails-ai.md)
- [AgentGate vs Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentgate-vs-lakera-guard.md)
- [AgentGate vs Llama Guard 4](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentgate-vs-llama-guard.md)
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- [AgentGate vs NVIDIA NeMo Guardrails](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentgate-vs-nemo-guardrails.md)
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