Head to head · Guard pii · October 2026 research run
Google Cloud Model Armor vs Presidio
Google Cloud Model Armor scores 77.9 (BB) on agent readiness against Presidio's 66 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Presidio leads on payments & pricing. Both do guard pii.
Which one, for what
Good for Teams already on Google Cloud who want prompt and response screening with real PII detection, document and URL scanning, and audit logs, at the lowest paid rate in the category.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 90 against 78
- Schema & documentation, 78 against 69
- Agent ergonomics, 75 against 69
- Security & auth, 100 against 53
- Maintenance & community, 85 against 63
- Transparency & trust, 87 against 65
Also in its favour
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
Watch for
OAuth only, and a template must exist in the same location as the endpoint before the first call
Presidio B
Good for Detecting and masking personal data in prompts, outputs, logs and images on the owner's own machines, with detection tuned by entity, threshold and custom recognisers.
Ahead on
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 20
Also in its favour
- No key needed to call it
- Open source
Watch for
The REST containers have no authentication by design. The FAQ says to put a gateway or proxy in front
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Google Cloud Model Armor | Presidio | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 90 | 78 | Google Cloud Model Armor +12 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 78 | 69 | Google Cloud Model Armor +9 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 75 | 69 | Google Cloud Model Armor +6 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 100 | 53 | Google Cloud Model Armor +47 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 20 | 60 | Presidio +40 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 85 | 63 | Google Cloud Model Armor +22 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 87 | 65 | Google Cloud Model Armor +22 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 77.9 · BB | 66 · B |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Google Cloud Model Armor | Presidio |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | SDK + MCP |
| Vendor | Google Cloud | Data Privacy Stack |
| Hosted endpoint | https://modelarmor.{location}.rep.googleapis.com/v1/projects/{project}/locations/{location}/templates/{template}:sanitizeUserPrompt | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-07-22 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-02 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-10-01 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | yes | |
| 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 | 210k npm/wk, 471k PyPI/wk | 11k stars, 1.2M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (8) | none |
Verdicts
Google Cloud Model Armor
2 million free tokens a month, then $0.10 per million. OAuth only, and a template must exist in the same location as the endpoint before the first call.
Presidio
MIT-licensed personal data detector with a public OpenAPI document, tests on Python 3.10 to 3.14 and about 1.2 million weekly PyPI downloads. The REST containers have no authentication, the project states no SLA or support, and it covers personal data only, with no prompt injection or content moderation checks.
Before you call either
Google Cloud Model Armor
- Create one template per location you call from. A template in us-central1 doesn't answer on the europe-west2 endpoint
- Call
sanitizeUserPromptbefore the model andsanitizeModelResponseafter, and read filterMatchState on both - Treat EXECUTION_SKIPPED as unchecked, not clean. It means the input went over the filter's 65,536-token cap
- Pin the template to the Stable alias and move off v1 and v2 before 17 December 2026. In asia-northeast3, v1 stays the Stable version
- Retry 500, 502, 503 and 504 with truncated exponential backoff, and keep fan-out under the 1,200 queries a minute shared by the project
Presidio
- Install from PyPI or pull images from ghcr.io/data-privacy-stack. The mcr.microsoft.com/presidio-* images are no longer updated
- Download a spaCy model (python -m spacy download en_core_web_lg) before the first
AnalyzerEngine()call, or use the Docker image - Send both text and language to
/analyze. A request missing either returns HTTP 500 with a JSON error field - Pass entities and score_threshold to limit results. Many country-specific recognisers are disabled by default and need enabling in the registry YAML
- Keep the containers on a private network or behind your own authenticating proxy. They accept any caller
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Google Cloud Model Armor or Presidio?
Google Cloud Model Armor scores 77.9 (BB) on agent readiness against Presidio's 66 (B), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Presidio leads on payments & pricing.
Can an agent call Google Cloud Model Armor and Presidio without installing anything?
Google Cloud Model Armor has a hosted endpoint at https://modelarmor.{location}.rep.googleapis.com/v1/projects/{project}/locations/{location}/templates/{template}:sanitizeUserPrompt. No hosted endpoint is listed for Presidio.
Are Google Cloud Model Armor and Presidio open source?
No open-source release is listed for Google Cloud Model Armor. Presidio is open source (MIT).
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- Amazon Bedrock Guardrails vs Presidio
- Guardrails AI vs Presidio
- Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) vs Presidio
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- Presidio vs NVIDIA NeMo Guardrails
- Llama Guard 4 vs Presidio
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/google-model-armor-vs-microsoft-presidio.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/google-model-armor.json·/api/v1/tools/microsoft-presidio.json - From a terminal
anchor compare google-model-armor microsoft-presidio(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "google-model-armor", "b": "microsoft-presidio"}at/mcp, no key