# Cisco AI Defense Inspection API vs Llama Guard 4

> Cisco AI Defense Inspection API scores 61.3 (C) on agent readiness against Llama Guard 4's 49.1 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Llama Guard 4 leads on payments & pricing. Both do guard moderation. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cisco-ai-defense-inspection-vs-llama-guard
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cisco-ai-defense-inspection-vs-llama-guard.md (~2,950 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cisco-ai-defense-inspection-vs-llama-guard.min.md (~780 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cisco-ai-defense-inspection-vs-llama-guard.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- 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 Llama Guard 4's 49.1 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Llama Guard 4 leads on payments & pricing. Both do guard moderation.

- 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
- Llama Guard 4: grade D, 49.1/100, rank #713 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/llama-guard.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/llama-guard.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 38
- Schema & documentation, 59 against 52
- Security & auth, 81 against 53
- Maintenance & community, 80 against 28
- Transparency & trust, 76 against 55

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

### Llama Guard 4 (D)

Good for: A team outside the EU with a GPU that wants content moderation of text and images on its own hardware, against a fixed 14-category policy it can edit in the prompt.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 45 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: Weights last changed on 29 April 2025, with no changelog, version tags or stated deprecation policy


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API | Llama Guard 4 | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 80 | 38 | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API +42 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 59 | 52 | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 67 | 67 | even |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 81 | 53 | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API +28 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 0 | 45 | Llama Guard 4 +45 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 28 | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API +52 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 55 | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API +21 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **61.3 · C** | **49.1 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API | Llama Guard 4 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | Model API |
| Vendor | Cisco Systems, Inc. | Meta |
| 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 | Llama 4 Community Licence (source-available weights, not an OSI licence), with the Llama 4 acceptable use policy |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-23 | 2025-04-29 |
| Terms last updated |  | 2025-04-05 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 35 stars, 4k PyPI/wk | 4.4k 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.

**Llama Guard 4.** A single self-hosted model classifies text and multi-image prompts against 14 MLCommons-aligned hazard categories and answers in a few tokens. The weights have not changed since 29 April 2025, download access needs Meta's manual approval, and the licence withholds the grant from individuals and companies based in the European Union.

## 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

### Llama Guard 4

1. Request access on the Hugging Face page before anything else. Approval is manual, and the form cannot be edited after submission
2. Send only the user turn to check an input, and the user turn plus the model's answer to check an output. The template picks the role from the message count
3. Parse the first line for `safe` or `unsafe` and the second for category codes. Set `max_new_tokens` to about 10 and turn sampling off
4. Do not send an image with no text. Meta says the model is not an image-only classifier, and S14 is skipped when an image is present
5. Pair it with a prompt-attack detector. The card says the model can itself be moved by adversarial or injected text

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Cisco AI Defense Inspection API or Llama Guard 4?

Cisco AI Defense Inspection API scores 61.3 (C) on agent readiness against Llama Guard 4's 49.1 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Llama Guard 4 leads on payments & pricing.

### Do Cisco AI Defense Inspection API and Llama Guard 4 need an API key?

Cisco AI Defense Inspection API needs an API key. Llama Guard 4 needs no key.

### Can an agent call Cisco AI Defense Inspection API and Llama Guard 4 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 Llama Guard 4.


## For agents

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

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