# LlamaFirewall vs Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API

> Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API scores 62.8 (B) on agent readiness against LlamaFirewall's 50.8 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. LlamaFirewall leads on payments & pricing. Both do guard injection. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llamafirewall-vs-prisma-airs
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llamafirewall-vs-prisma-airs.md (~2,950 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llamafirewall-vs-prisma-airs.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
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- 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: 2026-10-09

Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API scores 62.8 (B) on agent readiness against LlamaFirewall's 50.8 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. LlamaFirewall leads on payments & pricing. Both do guard injection.

- LlamaFirewall: grade D, 50.8/100, rank #682 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/llamafirewall.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/llamafirewall.json
- Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API: grade B, 62.8/100, rank #379 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/prisma-airs.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/prisma-airs.json

## Which one, for what

### LlamaFirewall (D)

Good for: A Python agent team that wants injection, hidden-character and generated-code checks in process, is willing to pin dependencies or install from main, and can get the gated weights.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 50 against 0

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Open source

Watch for: No PyPI release since 1.0.3 on 29 May 2025, and no changelog, tags or deprecation notes were found

### 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 53
- Schema & documentation, 68 against 49
- Agent ergonomics, 65 against 60
- Security & auth, 85 against 56
- Maintenance & community, 31 against 15
- Transparency & trust, 71 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

| Category | Weight | LlamaFirewall | Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 53 | 87 | Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API +34 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 49 | 68 | Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API +19 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 60 | 65 | Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API +5 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 56 | 85 | Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API +29 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 50 | 0 | LlamaFirewall +50 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 15 | 31 | Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API +16 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 58 | 71 | Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API +13 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **50.8 · D** | **62.8 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | LlamaFirewall | Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent framework | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Meta | Palo Alto Networks, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://service.api.aisecurity.paloaltonetworks.com/v1/scan/sync/request` |
| Transports |  | HTTP |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT (library). The Prompt Guard 2 weights it downloads are under the Llama 4 Community Licence | Proprietary 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 documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2025-05-29 | 2026-05-15 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked |  |
| Privacy policy last updated | no 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 |  |  |
| Popularity | 4.4k stars, 1k PyPI/wk | 10 stars, 999 PyPI/wk |

## Verdicts

**LlamaFirewall.** One `scan()` call runs several checks on the owner's machine and returns a short typed result. The last PyPI release is 1.0.3 from 29 May 2025, and its Prompt Guard loader imports a `huggingface_hub` class that current versions no longer export, so a fresh install needs older pins. The classifier weights also need Meta's manual approval.

**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

### LlamaFirewall

1. Pin `huggingface_hub` below 1.0 and a matching `transformers` 4.x before importing the Prompt Guard scanner from the 1.0.3 wheel, or install from main
2. Get access to `meta-llama/Llama-Prompt-Guard-2-86M` and set a Hugging Face token first. Without one the loader prompts for a login and a headless run stalls
3. Call `scan_async` inside a running event loop. `scan()` wraps `asyncio.run` and fails there. `scan_async` returns score 0.0 and reason `default` on every allow
4. Split text longer than 512 tokens yourself before a Prompt Guard scan. The library truncates and does not chunk
5. Do not feed a block `reason` back to the model. The Prompt Guard reason quotes the full scanned text, and the hidden ASCII reason decodes the hidden payload

### 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, LlamaFirewall or Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API?

Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API scores 62.8 (B) on agent readiness against LlamaFirewall's 50.8 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. LlamaFirewall leads on payments & pricing.

### Can an agent call LlamaFirewall and Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API without installing anything?

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

### Are LlamaFirewall and Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API open source?

LlamaFirewall is open source (MIT (library). The Prompt Guard 2 weights it downloads are under the Llama 4 Community Licence). No open-source release is listed for Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security API.


## For agents

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

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