# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lakera-guard-vs-mistral-moderation
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lakera-guard-vs-mistral-moderation.md (~1,700 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lakera-guard-vs-mistral-moderation.min.md (~380 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lakera-guard-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: 2026-10-05

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.

- Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails): grade C, 59.7/100, rank #260 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/lakera-guard.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/lakera-guard.json
- Mistral Moderation API: grade C, 58.6/100, rank #278 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mistral-moderation.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/mistral-moderation.json

## 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

| Category | Weight | Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) | Mistral Moderation API | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 65 | 40 | Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) +25 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 86 | 85 | Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 77 | 75 | Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 65 | 54 | Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) +11 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 15 | 40 | Mistral Moderation API +25 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 21 | 33 | Mistral Moderation API +12 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 59 | 83 | Mistral Moderation API +24 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **59.7 · C** | **58.6 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) | Mistral Moderation API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Check Point | Mistral AI |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.lakera.ai/v2/guard` | `https://api.mistral.ai/v1/moderations` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | none |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-06-08 | 2026-03-01 |
| Popularity | none | 769 stars, 8.4M npm/wk, 3.7M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (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

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