# Cisco AI Defense Inspection API vs Granite Guardian

> Cisco AI Defense Inspection API scores 61.3 (C) on agent readiness against Granite Guardian's 60.1 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Granite Guardian leads on payments & pricing. Both do guard injection. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cisco-ai-defense-inspection-vs-granite-guardian
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cisco-ai-defense-inspection-vs-granite-guardian.md (~3,000 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cisco-ai-defense-inspection-vs-granite-guardian.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
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- 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
- Updated: 2026-10-09

Cisco AI Defense Inspection API scores 61.3 (C) on agent readiness against Granite Guardian's 60.1 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Granite Guardian leads on payments & pricing. Both do guard injection.

- Cisco AI Defense Inspection API: grade C, 61.3/100, rank #429 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cisco-ai-defense-inspection.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cisco-ai-defense-inspection.json
- Granite Guardian: grade C, 60.1/100, rank #478 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/granite-guardian.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/granite-guardian.json

## Which one, for what

### Cisco AI Defense Inspection API (C)

Good for: A company already buying Cisco security through Security Cloud Control that wants its own application to decide what to do with each verdict.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 80 against 56
- Security & auth, 81 against 58
- Maintenance & community, 80 against 47
- Transparency & trust, 76 against 70

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

Watch for: No public price, free tier or trial for the Inspection API. Subscriptions are bought through sales and activated with a claim code

### 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:
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 0

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- No incidents deducted, where Cisco AI Defense Inspection API loses 3 points for them

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


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API | Granite Guardian | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 80 | 56 | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API +24 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 59 | 60 | Granite Guardian +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 67 | 69 | Granite Guardian +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 81 | 58 | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API +23 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 0 | 60 | Granite Guardian +60 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 47 | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API +33 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 70 | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **61.3 · C** | **60.1 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API | Granite Guardian |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | Model API |
| Vendor | Cisco Systems, Inc. | IBM |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://us.api.inspect.aidefense.security.cisco.com/api/v1/inspect/chat` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Paid | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Cisco's General Terms and the AI Defense Offer Description. The Python SDK is Apache-2.0 | Apache 2.0 for the weights and the repository |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-23 | 2026-04-29 |
| Terms last updated |  | 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 | 35 stars, 4k PyPI/wk | 182 stars |

## Verdicts

**Cisco AI Defense Inspection API.** Per-connection API keys with expiry, revocation and regeneration, published limits of 60,000 calls a minute, weekly dated release notes and a one-year retention statement suit companies already on Cisco Security Cloud Control. Access needs a subscription bought through sales, with no public price or trial for the API, and the developer changelog has one entry from February 2025.

**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

### Cisco AI Defense Inspection API

1. Send the key in `X-Cisco-AI-Defense-API-Key` to `POST /api/v1/inspect/chat` on the regional host where the tenant was created. US, Europe and Asia Pacific hosts differ
2. If the connection has a policy, `enabled_rules` in the request is ignored. Pass `enabled_rules` only for connections with no policy
3. The API never blocks anything itself. Read `is_safe` and `action` in the response and enforce the decision in your own code
4. On 429, wait and retry. The organisation has gone over one million tokens in parallel or 60,000 calls a minute
5. Don't request the Toxicity rule. It was removed on 16 September 2026, and the Safety rules such as Hate Speech, Harassment and Profanity replace it

### 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, Cisco AI Defense Inspection API or Granite Guardian?

Cisco AI Defense Inspection API scores 61.3 (C) on agent readiness against Granite Guardian's 60.1 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Granite Guardian leads on payments & pricing.

### Do Cisco AI Defense Inspection API and Granite Guardian need an API key?

Cisco AI Defense Inspection API needs an API key. Granite Guardian needs no key.

### Can an agent call Cisco AI Defense Inspection API and Granite Guardian without installing anything?

Cisco AI Defense Inspection API has a hosted endpoint at https://us.api.inspect.aidefense.security.cisco.com/api/v1/inspect/chat. No hosted endpoint is listed for Granite Guardian.


## For agents

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

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