Head to head · Guard moderation · October 2026 research run

Granite Guardian vs Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API

Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API scores 62.8 (B) on agent readiness against Granite Guardian's 60.1 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Granite Guardian leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do guard moderation.

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

  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 0
  • Maintenance & community, 47 against 31

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it

Watch for

Trained and tested on English only, per the model card

Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API B

Good for A company already buying Palo Alto Networks through Strata Cloud Manager that wants prompt, response and MCP tool scanning with DLP and URL filtering from the same vendor.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 87 against 56
  • Schema & documentation, 68 against 60
  • Security & auth, 85 against 58

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for

No public price, free tier or trial. Capacity is bought as Software NGFW credits, in steps of 1 billion tokens a month, through sales

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGranite GuardianPrisma AIRS AI Runtime Security APIEdge
Reliability16%205687Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API +31
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26068Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API +8
Agent ergonomics13%16.26965Granite Guardian +4
Security & auth14%17.55885Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API +27
Payments & pricing10%12.5600Granite Guardian +60
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.84731Granite Guardian +16
Transparency & trust7%8.87071Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API +1
Negative events≤1500
Total60.1 · C62.8 · B

Facts side by side

FactGranite GuardianPrisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API
KindModel APIHTTP API
VendorIBMPalo Alto Networks, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://service.api.aisecurity.paloaltonetworks.com/v1/scan/sync/request
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreePaid
x402nono
LicenceApache 2.0 for the weights and the repositoryProprietary service under the Palo Alto Networks end user licence agreement. The Python SDK is under the PolyForm Internal Use licence 1.0.0, which is not an OSI licence
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-04-292026-05-15
Terms last updatedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno 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
Popularity182 stars10 stars, 999 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.

Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API

A public OpenAPI document, ten detection types in one call, tool-call scanning, a remote MCP server, rotating API keys and OAuth roles suit teams already on Strata Cloud Manager. Access needs Software NGFW credits bought through sales, with no public price, trial or self-serve signup, and payloads flagged malicious are kept for up to 10 years.

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

Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API

  1. Send x-pan-token and an ai_profile with profile_name or profile_id on every scan. Both come from Strata Cloud Manager, and a key works only in its own region
  2. Put earlier turns first in contents. Only the last element is scanned, and the rest is context
  3. Read action (allow or block) and category, then check timeout and error, because a detector that failed is reported in errors with a 200
  4. Keep synchronous requests under 2 MB and asynchronous ones under 5 MB and 25 items, and fetch at most 5 scan or report IDs a call, 10 calls a minute
  5. For MCP, connect to /mcp on the regional host with x-pan-token and x-pan-profile headers, and call pan_inline_scan yourself before and after generation

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Granite Guardian or Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API?

Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API scores 62.8 (B) on agent readiness against Granite Guardian's 60.1 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Granite Guardian leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

Do Granite Guardian and Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API need an API key?

Granite Guardian needs no key. Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Granite Guardian and Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Granite Guardian. Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API has a hosted endpoint at https://service.api.aisecurity.paloaltonetworks.com/v1/scan/sync/request.

Other comparisons with Granite Guardian or Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API

Machine-readable

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