# Llama Guard 4 vs OpenAI Guardrails (slim)

> OpenAI Guardrails scores 69.5 (B) on agent readiness against Llama Guard 4's 49.1 (D), and leads in every scored category. Both do guard moderation. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llama-guard-vs-openai-guardrails.md (~2,650 tokens) · this version ~680 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llama-guard-vs-openai-guardrails.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llama-guard-vs-openai-guardrails
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

OpenAI Guardrails scores 69.5 (B) on agent readiness against Llama Guard 4's 49.1 (D), and leads in every scored category. Both do guard moderation.

- Llama Guard 4: D 49.1, rank #713 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/llama-guard.min.md
- OpenAI Guardrails: B 69.5, rank #175 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/openai-guardrails.min.md
- Llama Guard 4, 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. Also No key needed to call it.
- OpenAI Guardrails, good for Teams already on the OpenAI client or Agents SDK that want several checks from one config file with little code. Ahead on Reliability, 73 against 38; Schema & documentation, 66 against 52; Agent ergonomics, 73 against 67; Security & auth, 59 against 53; Payments & pricing, 60 against 45; Maintenance & community, 89 against 28; Transparency & trust, 76 against 55. Also Open source.

| Category | Llama Guard 4 | OpenAI Guardrails |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 38 | 73 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 52 | 66 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 67 | 73 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 53 | 59 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 45 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 28 | 89 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 55 | 76 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Llama Guard 4 | OpenAI Guardrails |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Agent framework |
| Vendor | Meta | OpenAI |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Licence | Llama 4 Community Licence (source-available weights, not an OSI licence), with the Llama 4 acceptable use policy | MIT |
| Last release | 2025-04-29 | 2026-09-10 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-04-05 | 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 | 259 stars, 19k npm/wk, 105k PyPI/wk |