Software decision profile
Lakera Guard
A real-time API that inspects prompts and model output for prompt injection, jailbreaks, system-prompt extraction and PII leakage, sitting between your application and any LLM.
Explore the trade-offs.
Where it stands outModel-agnostic — sits in front of hosted APIs or local models alikeExplore strengths ↗Close details ↑
- Covers direct and indirect prompt injection, jailbreaks, system-prompt extraction and PII leakage
- Filters are updated from a large, real-world attack dataset (Gandalf)
What to weighClosed-source commercial service — an external dependency on the request pathExplore limitations ↗Close details ↑
- Detection-based: a high block rate is not a guarantee
- Headline accuracy and latency numbers are vendor-published, not independently measured
Best suited toTeams shipping LLM features to production without an in-house security team · Agent and RAG pipelines exposed to untrusted input · Organisations already standardised on Check Point
What Lakera Guard’s own pages state.
Each line was read on the vendor’s site and found word for word in the quoted page. It records what the vendor states, not a test by Fathom Layer.
- Deployment
- AI Guardrails is available as an enterprise grade Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud-hosted solution or Self-hosted product.
Where it wins, where it doesn't
Pros
- Model-agnostic — sits in front of hosted APIs or local models alike
- Covers direct and indirect prompt injection, jailbreaks, system-prompt extraction and PII leakage
- Filters are updated from a large, real-world attack dataset (Gandalf)
Cons
- Closed-source commercial service — an external dependency on the request path
- Detection-based: a high block rate is not a guarantee
- Headline accuracy and latency numbers are vendor-published, not independently measured
Key Features
- ✦Real-time request and response scanning
- ✦Single chat-completions-style API endpoint
- ✦Prompt injection and jailbreak detection
- ✦PII and data-leakage detection
- ✦Self-hosted deployment option
Editorial note
Lakera Guard is a detection layer, not a guarantee. It scores every request in and every response out, blocks what crosses a threshold, and is model-agnostic — it works whether the model runs on a hosted API or on your own hardware. Its filters are trained partly on data from Gandalf, Lakera's public prompt-injection game, which has collected millions of real attack attempts. Check Point acquired Lakera in 2025 (reported around $300 million); the product now also ships as Check Point AI Guardrails, while the standalone Guard API and its free tier still exist. The detection-rate, latency and language-count figures Lakera publishes (98%+, sub-50ms, 100+ languages) are the vendor's own — treat them as a claim, not a measured result. The real trade-off is architectural: you add a network hop and an external dependency to every LLM call, in exchange for a maintained, continuously updated filter you do not have to build or keep current yourself.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Lakera Guard for?↓
What are the drawbacks of Lakera Guard?↓
What does Lakera Guard do well?↓
Alternatives to consider
See all alternatives →Further reading
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