# Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) vs LlamaFirewall

> Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) scores 60.7 (C) on agent readiness against LlamaFirewall's 50.8 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. LlamaFirewall leads on payments & pricing. Both do guard injection. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-09

Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) scores 60.7 (C) on agent readiness against LlamaFirewall's 50.8 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. LlamaFirewall leads on payments & pricing. Both do guard injection.

- Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields): grade C, 60.7/100, rank #449 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/azure-ai-content-safety.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/azure-ai-content-safety.json
- LlamaFirewall: grade D, 50.8/100, rank #682 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/llamafirewall.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/llamafirewall.json

## Which one, for what

### Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) (C)

Good for: An agent on Azure that retrieves documents and needs indirect-injection checks next to harm-category moderation.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 69 against 49
- Agent ergonomics, 78 against 60
- Security & auth, 74 against 56
- Maintenance & community, 45 against 15
- Transparency & trust, 80 against 58

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: Needs an Azure subscription with a card, a resource and a region that has the feature, before the first call

### LlamaFirewall (D)

Good for: A Python agent team that wants injection, hidden-character and generated-code checks in process, is willing to pin dependencies or install from main, and can get the gated weights.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 50 against 15

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Open source

Watch for: No PyPI release since 1.0.3 on 29 May 2025, and no changelog, tags or deprecation notes were found


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) | LlamaFirewall | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 53 | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) +2 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 69 | 49 | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) +20 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 78 | 60 | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) +18 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 74 | 56 | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) +18 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 15 | 50 | LlamaFirewall +35 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 45 | 15 | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) +30 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 58 | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) +22 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **60.7 · C** | **50.8 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) | LlamaFirewall |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | Agent framework |
| Vendor | Microsoft Azure | Meta |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://{resource}.cognitiveservices.azure.com/contentsafety/text:shieldPrompt` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP |  |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | MIT (library). The Prompt Guard 2 weights it downloads are under the Llama 4 Community Licence |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-01 | 2025-05-29 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-01 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | yes |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read |  |
| Popularity | 17k npm/wk, 218k PyPI/wk | 4.4k stars, 1k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | none |

## 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.

**LlamaFirewall.** One `scan()` call runs several checks on the owner's machine and returns a short typed result. The last PyPI release is 1.0.3 from 29 May 2025, and its Prompt Guard loader imports a `huggingface_hub` class that current versions no longer export, so a fresh install needs older pins. The classifier weights also need Meta's manual approval.

## 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

### LlamaFirewall

1. Pin `huggingface_hub` below 1.0 and a matching `transformers` 4.x before importing the Prompt Guard scanner from the 1.0.3 wheel, or install from main
2. Get access to `meta-llama/Llama-Prompt-Guard-2-86M` and set a Hugging Face token first. Without one the loader prompts for a login and a headless run stalls
3. Call `scan_async` inside a running event loop. `scan()` wraps `asyncio.run` and fails there. `scan_async` returns score 0.0 and reason `default` on every allow
4. Split text longer than 512 tokens yourself before a Prompt Guard scan. The library truncates and does not chunk
5. Do not feed a block `reason` back to the model. The Prompt Guard reason quotes the full scanned text, and the hidden ASCII reason decodes the hidden payload

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) or LlamaFirewall?

Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) scores 60.7 (C) on agent readiness against LlamaFirewall's 50.8 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. LlamaFirewall leads on payments & pricing.

### Can an agent call Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) and LlamaFirewall without installing anything?

Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) has a hosted endpoint at https://{resource}.cognitiveservices.azure.com/contentsafety/text:shieldPrompt. No hosted endpoint is listed for LlamaFirewall.

### Are Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) and LlamaFirewall open source?

No open-source release is listed for Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields). LlamaFirewall is open source (MIT (library). The Prompt Guard 2 weights it downloads are under the Llama 4 Community Licence).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) or LlamaFirewall

- [Amazon Bedrock Guardrails vs Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-bedrock-guardrails-vs-azure-ai-content-safety.md)
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- [Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) vs Cisco AI Defense Inspection API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-ai-content-safety-vs-cisco-ai-defense-inspection.md)
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- [Google Cloud Model Armor vs LlamaFirewall](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-model-armor-vs-llamafirewall.md)
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- [LlamaFirewall vs NVIDIA NeMo Guardrails](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llamafirewall-vs-nemo-guardrails.md)
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- [Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) vs Llama Guard 4](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-ai-content-safety-vs-llama-guard.md)
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- [Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) vs OpenAI Moderation API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-ai-content-safety-vs-openai-moderation.md)
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