# Cisco AI Defense Inspection API vs LlamaFirewall

> Cisco AI Defense Inspection API scores 61.3 (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.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cisco-ai-defense-inspection-vs-llamafirewall
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cisco-ai-defense-inspection-vs-llamafirewall.md (~3,000 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cisco-ai-defense-inspection-vs-llamafirewall.min.md (~730 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 LlamaFirewall's 50.8 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. LlamaFirewall 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
- 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

### 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 53
- Schema & documentation, 59 against 49
- Agent ergonomics, 67 against 60
- Security & auth, 81 against 56
- Maintenance & community, 80 against 15
- Transparency & trust, 76 against 58

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

### 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 0

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

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 | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API | LlamaFirewall | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 80 | 53 | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API +27 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 59 | 49 | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API +10 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 67 | 60 | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API +7 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 81 | 56 | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API +25 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 0 | 50 | LlamaFirewall +50 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 15 | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API +65 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 58 | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API +18 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **61.3 · C** | **50.8 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Cisco AI Defense Inspection API | LlamaFirewall |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | Agent framework |
| Vendor | Cisco Systems, Inc. | Meta |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://us.api.inspect.aidefense.security.cisco.com/api/v1/inspect/chat` | no (local only) |
| Transports | 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 | 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 | 2026-09-23 | 2025-05-29 |
| 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 | 4.4k stars, 1k PyPI/wk |

## 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.

**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

### 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

### 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, Cisco AI Defense Inspection API or LlamaFirewall?

Cisco AI Defense Inspection API scores 61.3 (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 Cisco AI Defense Inspection API and LlamaFirewall 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 LlamaFirewall.

### Are Cisco AI Defense Inspection API and LlamaFirewall open source?

No open-source release is listed for Cisco AI Defense Inspection API. 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/cisco-ai-defense-inspection-vs-llamafirewall.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cisco-ai-defense-inspection-vs-llamafirewall.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "cisco-ai-defense-inspection", "b": "llamafirewall"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare cisco-ai-defense-inspection llamafirewall`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cisco-ai-defense-inspection.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/llamafirewall.json

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