# Granite Guardian vs Mistral Moderation API

> Granite Guardian scores 60.1 (C) on agent readiness against Mistral Moderation API's 58.4 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Mistral Moderation API leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and transparency & trust. Both do guard moderation. Category scores…

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-guardian-vs-mistral-moderation
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-guardian-vs-mistral-moderation.md (~2,750 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-guardian-vs-mistral-moderation.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-guardian-vs-mistral-moderation.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

Granite Guardian scores 60.1 (C) on agent readiness against Mistral Moderation API's 58.4 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Mistral Moderation API leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and transparency & trust. Both do guard moderation.

- 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
- Mistral Moderation API: grade C, 58.4/100, rank #522 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mistral-moderation.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/mistral-moderation.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:
- Reliability, 56 against 40
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 40
- Maintenance & community, 47 against 33

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it

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

### Mistral Moderation API (C)

Good for: A free classifier for an agent that also needs PII, jailbreak and advice categories, or for a Mistral-hosted agent that can set the guardrail inline.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 85 against 60
- Agent ergonomics, 75 against 69
- Transparency & trust, 81 against 70

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: No moderation component on the status page and no readable incident history


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Granite Guardian | Mistral Moderation API | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 56 | 40 | Granite Guardian +16 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 60 | 85 | Mistral Moderation API +25 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 69 | 75 | Mistral Moderation API +6 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 58 | 54 | Granite Guardian +4 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 40 | Granite Guardian +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 47 | 33 | Granite Guardian +14 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 81 | Mistral Moderation API +11 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **60.1 · C** | **58.4 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Granite Guardian | Mistral Moderation API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | IBM | Mistral AI |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.mistral.ai/v1/moderations` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache 2.0 for the weights and the repository | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-04-29 | 2026-03-01 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-09-25 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-09-03 |
| Customer content may train models |  | yes, with an opt-out |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 182 stars | 769 stars, 8.4M npm/wk, 3.7M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (2) |

## 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.

**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

### 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

### 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

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Granite Guardian or Mistral Moderation API?

Granite Guardian scores 60.1 (C) on agent readiness against Mistral Moderation API's 58.4 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Mistral Moderation API leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and transparency & trust.

### Do Granite Guardian and Mistral Moderation API need an API key?

Granite Guardian needs no key. Mistral Moderation API needs an API key.

### Can an agent call Granite Guardian and Mistral Moderation API without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Granite Guardian. Mistral Moderation API has a hosted endpoint at https://api.mistral.ai/v1/moderations.


## For agents

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

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