# Cisco AI Defense Inspection API vs Granite Guardian (slim)

> 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.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cisco-ai-defense-inspection-vs-granite-guardian.md (~3,000 tokens) · this version ~680 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cisco-ai-defense-inspection-vs-granite-guardian.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cisco-ai-defense-inspection-vs-granite-guardian
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.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: C 61.3, rank #429 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cisco-ai-defense-inspection.min.md
- Granite Guardian: C 60.1, rank #478 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/granite-guardian.min.md
- Cisco AI Defense Inspection API, 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 A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install.
- Granite Guardian, 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 No key needed to call it; No incidents deducted, where Cisco AI Defense Inspection API loses 3 points for them.

| Category | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API | Granite Guardian |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 80 | 56 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 59 | 60 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 67 | 69 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 81 | 58 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 0 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 80 | 47 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 76 | 70 |

| Fact (where they differ) | 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) |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Paid | Free |
| 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 |
| Last release | 2026-09-23 | 2026-04-29 |
| Terms last updated |  | no document linked |
| Popularity | 35 stars, 4k PyPI/wk | 182 stars |