# Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) vs Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails)

> Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) has a score of 60.9 (C) against Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails)'s 59.7 (C). Both do guard injection. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 24 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-05

Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) has a score of 60.9 (C) against Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails)'s 59.7 (C). Both do guard injection. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 24 points.

- Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields): grade C, 60.9/100, rank #237 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/azure-ai-content-safety.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/azure-ai-content-safety.json
- Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails): grade C, 59.7/100, rank #260 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/lakera-guard.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/lakera-guard.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) for security & auth (+9), maintenance & community (+24), transparency & trust (+24).

Pick Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) for reliability (+10), schema & documentation (+17).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) | Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 65 | Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) +10 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 69 | 86 | Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) +17 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 78 | 77 | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) +1 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 74 | 65 | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) +9 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 15 | 15 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 45 | 21 | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) +24 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 83 | 59 | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) +24 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **60.9 · C** | **59.7 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) | Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Microsoft Azure | Check Point |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://{resource}.cognitiveservices.azure.com/contentsafety/text:shieldPrompt` | `https://api.lakera.ai/v2/guard` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | none |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-01 | 2026-06-08 |
| Popularity | 17k npm/wk, 218k PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields).** Prompt Shields checks up to five retrieved documents for indirect injection, not only the user prompt. Needs an Azure subscription with a card, a resource and a region that has the feature, before the first call.

**Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails).** OpenAI message format in, including tools, tool calls and tool results. Prompts and outputs are stored for the dashboard by default.

## Before you call either

### Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields)

1. Send retrieved pages and tool results in the documents array of shieldPrompt, not in userPrompt, so document attacks are reported separately
2. Call text:shieldPrompt over REST with api-version=2024-09-01. The Python SDK 1.0.0 has no method for it
3. Keep each request under 10,000 characters across prompt and documents, and split long tool results
4. Create the resource in a region that lists Prompt Shields, since not every region has it
5. On F0 you get 5 requests a second. Queue checks or move to S0 before load testing

### Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails)

1. Start the project in Detect mode and calibrate before Enforce. In Detect mode flagged is always false
2. Send the whole conversation, but expect only the last user, assistant or tool turn to be scored
3. Ask for breakdown=true and treat the confidence levels as a dial, not a boolean
4. Turn off prompt logging in General Settings if the dashboard shouldn't hold user content
5. Pin eu.api.lakera.ai or us.api.lakera.ai rather than api.lakera.ai when residency matters

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