Head to head · Guard moderation · October 2026 research run

Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) vs Mistral Moderation API

Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) has a score of 59.7 (C) against Mistral Moderation API's 58.6 (C). Both do guard moderation. The largest gap is reliability, 25 points.

Which one, for what

Pick Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) for

  • reliability (+25)
  • security & auth (+11)

Pick Mistral Moderation API for

  • payments & pricing (+25)
  • maintenance & community (+12)
  • transparency & trust (+24)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails)Mistral Moderation APIEdge
Reliability16%206540Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) +25
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28685Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) +1
Agent ergonomics13%16.27775Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) +2
Security & auth14%17.56554Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) +11
Payments & pricing10%12.51540Mistral Moderation API +25
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.82133Mistral Moderation API +12
Transparency & trust7%8.85983Mistral Moderation API +24
Negative events≤1500
Total59.7 · C58.6 · C

Facts side by side

FactLakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails)Mistral Moderation API
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorCheck PointMistral AI
Hosted endpointhttps://api.lakera.ai/v2/guardhttps://api.mistral.ai/v1/moderations
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
Licencenonenone
Tools exposednonenone
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listednot listed
Last release2026-06-082026-03-01
Popularitynone769 stars, 8.4M npm/wk, 3.7M PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3.5/5 (2)3/5 (2)

Verdicts

Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails)

OpenAI message format in, including tools, tool calls and tool results. Prompts and outputs are stored for the dashboard by default.

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

Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails)

  1. Start the project in Detect mode and calibrate before Enforce. In Detect mode flagged is always false
  2. Send the whole conversation, but expect only the last user, assistant or tool turn to be scored
  3. Ask for breakdown=true and treat the confidence levels as a dial, not a boolean
  4. Turn off prompt logging in General Settings if the dashboard shouldn't hold user content
  5. Pin eu.api.lakera.ai or us.api.lakera.ai rather than api.lakera.ai when residency matters

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

Other comparisons with Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) or Mistral Moderation API

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