# Llama Guard 4 vs Presidio

> Presidio scores 66 (B) on agent readiness against Llama Guard 4's 49.1 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do guard self host. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llama-guard-vs-microsoft-presidio
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llama-guard-vs-microsoft-presidio.md (~2,250 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llama-guard-vs-microsoft-presidio.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llama-guard-vs-microsoft-presidio.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: 2026-10-08

Presidio scores 66 (B) on agent readiness against Llama Guard 4's 49.1 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do guard self host.

- Llama Guard 4: grade D, 49.1/100, rank #614 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/llama-guard.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/llama-guard.json
- Presidio: grade B, 66/100, rank #248 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/microsoft-presidio.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/microsoft-presidio.json

## Which one, for what

### Llama Guard 4 (D)

Good for: A team outside the EU with a GPU that wants content moderation of text and images on its own hardware, against a fixed 14-category policy it can edit in the prompt.

Watch for: Weights last changed on 29 April 2025, with no changelog, version tags or stated deprecation policy

### Presidio (B)

Good for: Detecting and masking personal data in prompts, outputs, logs and images on the owner's own machines, with detection tuned by entity, threshold and custom recognisers.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 78 against 38
- Schema & documentation, 69 against 52
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 45
- Maintenance & community, 63 against 28
- Transparency & trust, 65 against 55

Also in its favour:
- Open source

Watch for: The REST containers have no authentication by design. The FAQ says to put a gateway or proxy in front


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Llama Guard 4 | Presidio | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 38 | 78 | Presidio +40 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 52 | 69 | Presidio +17 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 67 | 69 | Presidio +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 53 | 53 | even |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 45 | 60 | Presidio +15 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 28 | 63 | Presidio +35 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 55 | 65 | Presidio +10 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **49.1 · D** | **66 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Llama Guard 4 | Presidio |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | SDK + MCP |
| Vendor | Meta | Data Privacy Stack |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Llama 4 Community Licence (source-available weights, not an OSI licence), with the Llama 4 acceptable use policy | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2025-04-29 | 2026-07-22 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-04-05 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text |  |
| Popularity | 4.4k stars | 11k stars, 1.2M PyPI/wk |

## Verdicts

**Llama Guard 4.** A single self-hosted model classifies text and multi-image prompts against 14 MLCommons-aligned hazard categories and answers in a few tokens. The weights have not changed since 29 April 2025, download access needs Meta's manual approval, and the licence withholds the grant from individuals and companies based in the European Union.

**Presidio.** MIT-licensed personal data detector with a public OpenAPI document, tests on Python 3.10 to 3.14 and about 1.2 million weekly PyPI downloads. The REST containers have no authentication, the project states no SLA or support, and it covers personal data only, with no prompt injection or content moderation checks.

## Before you call either

### Llama Guard 4

1. Request access on the Hugging Face page before anything else. Approval is manual, and the form cannot be edited after submission
2. Send only the user turn to check an input, and the user turn plus the model's answer to check an output. The template picks the role from the message count
3. Parse the first line for `safe` or `unsafe` and the second for category codes. Set `max_new_tokens` to about 10 and turn sampling off
4. Do not send an image with no text. Meta says the model is not an image-only classifier, and S14 is skipped when an image is present
5. Pair it with a prompt-attack detector. The card says the model can itself be moved by adversarial or injected text

### Presidio

1. Install from PyPI or pull images from ghcr.io/data-privacy-stack. The mcr.microsoft.com/presidio-* images are no longer updated
2. Download a spaCy model (python -m spacy download en_core_web_lg) before the first `AnalyzerEngine()` call, or use the Docker image
3. Send both text and language to `/analyze`. A request missing either returns HTTP 500 with a JSON error field
4. Pass entities and score_threshold to limit results. Many country-specific recognisers are disabled by default and need enabling in the registry YAML
5. Keep the containers on a private network or behind your own authenticating proxy. They accept any caller

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Llama Guard 4 or Presidio?

Presidio scores 66 (B) on agent readiness against Llama Guard 4's 49.1 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

### Can an agent call Llama Guard 4 and Presidio without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Llama Guard 4. No hosted endpoint is listed for Presidio.

### Are Llama Guard 4 and Presidio open source?

No open-source release is listed for Llama Guard 4. Presidio is open source (MIT).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Llama Guard 4 or Presidio

- [Amazon Bedrock Guardrails vs Llama Guard 4](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-bedrock-guardrails-vs-llama-guard.md)
- [Azure AI Content Safety (Prompt Shields) vs Llama Guard 4](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-ai-content-safety-vs-llama-guard.md)
- [Google Cloud Model Armor vs Llama Guard 4](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-model-armor-vs-llama-guard.md)
- [Guardrails AI vs Llama Guard 4](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/guardrails-ai-vs-llama-guard.md)
- [Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) vs Llama Guard 4](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lakera-guard-vs-llama-guard.md)
- [Llama Guard 4 vs Mistral Moderation API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llama-guard-vs-mistral-moderation.md)
- [Llama Guard 4 vs NVIDIA NeMo Guardrails](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llama-guard-vs-nemo-guardrails.md)
- [Llama Guard 4 vs OpenAI Moderation API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llama-guard-vs-openai-moderation.md)
- [Amazon Bedrock Guardrails vs Presidio](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-bedrock-guardrails-vs-microsoft-presidio.md)
- [Google Cloud Model Armor vs Presidio](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-model-armor-vs-microsoft-presidio.md)
- [Guardrails AI vs Presidio](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/guardrails-ai-vs-microsoft-presidio.md)
- [Lakera Guard (Check Point AI Guardrails) vs Presidio](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lakera-guard-vs-microsoft-presidio.md)
- [Presidio vs Mistral Moderation API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/microsoft-presidio-vs-mistral-moderation.md)
- [Presidio vs NVIDIA NeMo Guardrails](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/microsoft-presidio-vs-nemo-guardrails.md)