# Granite Guardian vs Presidio

> Presidio scores 66 (B) on agent readiness against Granite Guardian's 60.1 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Granite Guardian leads on security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do guard self host. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-guardian-vs-microsoft-presidio
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-guardian-vs-microsoft-presidio.md (~2,600 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-guardian-vs-microsoft-presidio.min.md (~530 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-guardian-vs-microsoft-presidio.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

Presidio scores 66 (B) on agent readiness against Granite Guardian's 60.1 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Granite Guardian leads on security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do guard self host.

- Granite Guardian: grade C, 60.1/100, rank #478 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/granite-guardian.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/granite-guardian.json
- Presidio: grade B, 66/100, rank #281 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/microsoft-presidio.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/microsoft-presidio.json

## Which one, for what

### Granite Guardian (C)

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:
- Security & auth, 58 against 53
- Transparency & trust, 70 against 65

Watch for: Trained and tested on English only, per the model card

### 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:
- Reliability, 78 against 56
- Schema & documentation, 69 against 60
- Maintenance & community, 63 against 47

Also in its favour:
- 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 | Granite Guardian | Presidio | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 56 | 78 | Presidio +22 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 60 | 69 | Presidio +9 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 69 | 69 | even |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 58 | 53 | Granite Guardian +5 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 60 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 47 | 63 | Presidio +16 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 65 | Granite Guardian +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **60.1 · C** | **66 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Granite Guardian | Presidio |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | SDK + MCP |
| Vendor | IBM | Data Privacy Stack |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache 2.0 for the weights and the repository | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-04-29 | 2026-07-22 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 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 | 182 stars | 11k stars, 1.2M PyPI/wk |

## Verdicts

**Granite Guardian.** One ungated Apache 2.0 model judges harm, jailbreaks, RAG groundedness, function-call errors and custom criteria, with signed weights and published evaluation code. It is trained and tested on English only, each call checks one criterion, the 4.1 prompt format differs from 3.x, and IBM's watsonx.ai lists only the deprecated 3.0 model.

**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

### Granite Guardian

1. Append the `<guardian>` block as the final user message, with the mode line, `### Criteria:` and `### Scoring Schema:`. Copy the strings from the model card, because no package builds them
2. Use the no-think instruction for gating and parse `<score>`. Think mode writes a reasoning trace first, and the card's examples allow up to 2,048 output tokens
3. Treat `yes` as the criterion being met, which for built-in criteria means the risk is present. Treat a missing `<score>` tag as a failed check
4. Pass retrieved text through `documents=` and tool schemas through `available_tools=` in `apply_chat_template`, not inside the message text
5. Under Ollama, set `num_ctx` in the request options. IBM's docs say the default context is short and long requests are truncated

### Presidio

1. Install from PyPI or pull images from ghcr.io/data-privacy-stack. The mcr.microsoft.com/presidio-* images are no longer updated
2. Download a spaCy model (python -m spacy download en_core_web_lg) before the first `AnalyzerEngine()` call, or use the Docker image
3. Send both text and language to `/analyze`. A request missing either returns HTTP 500 with a JSON error field
4. Pass entities and score_threshold to limit results. Many country-specific recognisers are disabled by default and need enabling in the registry YAML
5. Keep the containers on a private network or behind your own authenticating proxy. They accept any caller

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Granite Guardian or Presidio?

Presidio scores 66 (B) on agent readiness against Granite Guardian's 60.1 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Granite Guardian leads on security & auth and transparency & trust.

### Can an agent call Granite Guardian and Presidio without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Granite Guardian. No hosted endpoint is listed for Presidio.

### Are Granite Guardian and Presidio open source?

No open-source release is listed for Granite Guardian. Presidio is open source (MIT).


## For agents

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

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