# Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) vs Mistral Moderation API

> Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) has a score of 60.9 (C) against Mistral Moderation API's 58.6 (C). Both do guard moderation. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 25 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-04

Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) has a score of 60.9 (C) against Mistral Moderation API's 58.6 (C). Both do guard moderation. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 25 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
- Mistral Moderation API: grade C, 58.6/100, rank #278 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mistral-moderation.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/mistral-moderation.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) for reliability (+15), security & auth (+20), maintenance & community (+12).

Pick Mistral Moderation API for schema & documentation (+16), payments & pricing (+25).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) | Mistral Moderation API | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 40 | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) +15 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 69 | 85 | Mistral Moderation API +16 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 78 | 75 | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 74 | 54 | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) +20 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 15 | 40 | Mistral Moderation API +25 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 45 | 33 | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) +12 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 83 | 83 | even |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **60.9 · C** | **58.6 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) | Mistral Moderation API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Microsoft Azure | Mistral AI |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://{resource}.cognitiveservices.azure.com/contentsafety/text:shieldPrompt` | `https://api.mistral.ai/v1/moderations` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| 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 | 2026-03-01 |
| Popularity | 17k npm/wk, 218k PyPI/wk | 769 stars, 8.4M npm/wk, 3.7M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3/5 (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.

**Mistral Moderation API.** Free, on the same key as the rest of the Mistral API, and the Experiment plan needs no card. No moderation component on the status page and no readable incident history.

## 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

### Mistral Moderation API

1. Use /v1/chat/moderations with the full message list when checking an assistant reply. The raw endpoint has no context
2. Read category_scores and set your own threshold per category. The booleans use Mistral's cut-offs
3. Pin mistral-moderation-2603. The 2411 model was retired on 31 March 2026
4. Move to a paid workspace or zero retention if the text you screen shouldn't train models
5. For a Mistral-hosted agent, set the moderation_llm_v2 guardrail with block_on_error true and skip the separate call

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