# Granite Guardian vs OpenAI Moderation API (slim)

> OpenAI Moderation API scores 71.3 (BB) on agent readiness against Granite Guardian's 60.1 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Granite Guardian leads on payments & pricing. Both do guard moderation. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-guardian-vs-openai-moderation.md (~2,600 tokens) · this version ~730 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-guardian-vs-openai-moderation.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-guardian-vs-openai-moderation
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

OpenAI Moderation API scores 71.3 (BB) on agent readiness against Granite Guardian's 60.1 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Granite Guardian leads on payments & pricing. Both do guard moderation.

- Granite Guardian: C 60.1, rank #478 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/granite-guardian.min.md
- OpenAI Moderation API: BB 71.3, rank #126 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/openai-moderation.min.md
- Granite Guardian, 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 Payments & pricing, 60 against 30. Also No key needed to call it.
- OpenAI Moderation API, good for A free harm-category filter for an agent already on OpenAI. Ahead on Reliability, 65 against 56; Schema & documentation, 92 against 60; Agent ergonomics, 85 against 69; Security & auth, 92 against 58; Transparency & trust, 87 against 70. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install.

| Category | Granite Guardian | OpenAI Moderation API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 56 | 65 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 60 | 92 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 69 | 85 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 58 | 92 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 30 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 47 | 47 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 70 | 87 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Granite Guardian | OpenAI Moderation API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | IBM | OpenAI |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.openai.com/v1/moderations` |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Licence | Apache 2.0 for the weights and the repository | none |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-04-29 | 2026-06-04 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models |  | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | 182 stars | 31k stars |
| Agent reviews | none | 4/5 (2) |