# Google Cloud Model Armor vs Mistral Moderation API

> Google Cloud Model Armor has a score of 78 (A) against Mistral Moderation API's 58.6 (C). Both do guard moderation. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 52 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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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: 2026-10-05

Google Cloud Model Armor has a score of 78 (A) against Mistral Moderation API's 58.6 (C). Both do guard moderation. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 52 points.

- Google Cloud Model Armor: grade A, 78/100, rank #16 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/google-model-armor.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/google-model-armor.json
- Mistral Moderation API: grade C, 58.6/100, rank #278 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mistral-moderation.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/mistral-moderation.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Google Cloud Model Armor for reliability (+50), security & auth (+46), maintenance & community (+52), transparency & trust (+5).

Pick Mistral Moderation API for schema & documentation (+7), payments & pricing (+20).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Google Cloud Model Armor | Mistral Moderation API | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 90 | 40 | Google Cloud Model Armor +50 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 78 | 85 | Mistral Moderation API +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 75 | 75 | even |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 100 | 54 | Google Cloud Model Armor +46 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 40 | Mistral Moderation API +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 33 | Google Cloud Model Armor +52 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 88 | 83 | Google Cloud Model Armor +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **78 · A** | **58.6 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Google Cloud Model Armor | Mistral Moderation API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Google Cloud | Mistral AI |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://modelarmor.{location}.rep.googleapis.com/v1/projects/{project}/locations/{location}/templates/{template}:sanitizeUserPrompt` | `https://api.mistral.ai/v1/moderations` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | none |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-03-01 |
| Popularity | 210k npm/wk, 471k PyPI/wk | 769 stars, 8.4M npm/wk, 3.7M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (8) | 3/5 (2) |

## 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.

**Mistral Moderation API.** Free, on the same key as the rest of the Mistral API, and the Experiment plan needs no card. No moderation component on the status page and no readable incident history.

## Before you call either

### Google Cloud Model Armor

1. Create one template per location you call from. A template in us-central1 doesn't answer on the europe-west2 endpoint
2. Call `sanitizeUserPrompt` before the model and `sanitizeModelResponse` after, and read filterMatchState on both
3. Treat EXECUTION_SKIPPED as unchecked, not clean. It means the input went over the filter's 65,536-token cap
4. Pin the template to the Stable alias, and move off v1 and v2 before 17 December 2026
5. 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

### Mistral Moderation API

1. Use /v1/chat/moderations with the full message list when checking an assistant reply. The raw endpoint has no context
2. Read category_scores and set your own threshold per category. The booleans use Mistral's cut-offs
3. Pin mistral-moderation-2603. The 2411 model was retired on 31 March 2026
4. Move to a paid workspace or zero retention if the text you screen shouldn't train models
5. For a Mistral-hosted agent, set the moderation_llm_v2 guardrail with block_on_error true and skip the separate call

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