HiddenLayer vs Lakera
Both are guardrails & safety tools. Here is how they actually differ on price, billing model and deployment.
HiddenLayer
One of the last independent AI security vendors, and the only one here with a serious security research record - 48+ CVEs disclosed in ML frameworks. Still Series A while every direct competitor was bought by a security giant.
Lakera
The best-known prompt injection defence API, acquired by Check Point in September 2025 for a reported $300M. Still developed by the original Zurich team, but sales now run through Check Point enterprise procurement.
| HiddenLayer | Lakera | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Guardrails & Safety | Guardrails & Safety |
| Our rating | 4/5 | 4/5 |
| Starting price | Not published | Not published |
| Billing meter | No usage metering | No usage metering |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Free self-hosting | No or paid tier only | No or paid tier only |
| Best for | Enterprises and government buyers who need model supply chain security, AI asset discovery and airgapped operation, rather than application-layer output filtering. | Teams that want managed, low-latency prompt injection defence with enterprise support and are comfortable with a proprietary API and an enterprise sales process. |
Our verdict on HiddenLayer
HiddenLayer is the most technically credible independent left in AI security, and it solves a different problem from most of this category. Where Guardrails AI validates output and Lakera detects prompt injection, HiddenLayer secures models and the pipeline around them - AI discovery, supply chain security, runtime defence and attack simulation, all model-agnostic and agentless. Supply chain in particular is genuinely under-covered, because a tampered model artefact bypasses every runtime guardrail you have deployed. The credibility signal that matters is research output rather than marketing - 48+ CVEs disclosed in ML frameworks and 25+ granted patents is substance, and very little in this segment can point to comparable work. The tension is capital. It remains Series A at roughly $56M while Protect AI went to Palo Alto, Robust Intelligence to Cisco, Lakera to Check Point and CalypsoAI to F5. Independence is a real virtue in a consolidated market, but competing against acquirers' balance sheets on that base is hard, and it makes HiddenLayer a conspicuous target.
Full HiddenLayer review →Our verdict on Lakera
Lakera is the strongest managed prompt injection defence available and the acquisition has not obviously damaged it. Check Point acquired the company in September 2025 in a deal reported around $300 million, taking Lakera Guard, Lakera Red and the Gandalf dataset into its AI security platform, and basing its Global Center of Excellence for AI Security on the Zurich team. That team still maintains the detection models, which is the outcome you want from an acquisition and is notably better than what happened to Helicone. The technical case rests on data. Lakera's models learn from a very large stream of adversarial prompts, drawn partly from the Gandalf community game, and that corpus is genuinely hard for a competitor to replicate. Vendor figures of 98%+ detection at sub-50ms latency with under 0.5% false positives are strong if accurate, though we could not verify them. The friction is commercial - nothing is published on pricing, and buying now means Check Point enterprise procurement rather than a credit card.
Full Lakera review →Frequently Asked Questions
What is the main difference between HiddenLayer and Lakera?
HiddenLayer: Enterprises and government buyers who need model supply chain security, AI asset discovery and airgapped operation, rather than application-layer output filtering. Lakera: Teams that want managed, low-latency prompt injection defence with enterprise support and are comfortable with a proprietary API and an enterprise sales process. Both sit in Guardrails & Safety, so the decision usually comes down to billing model and deployment rather than raw capability.
Which is cheaper, HiddenLayer or Lakera?
It depends entirely on your workload shape, because they meter differently - HiddenLayer bills on no usage metering and Lakera bills on no usage metering. Published starting prices are Not published and Not published respectively, but those numbers are not comparable until you apply them to the same traffic. Use our cost calculator to model both against your own request volume and span count.
Can I self-host HiddenLayer or Lakera?
HiddenLayer: No or paid tier only. Lakera: No or paid tier only. Free self-hosting means no licence fee, not no cost - you still own the infrastructure, upgrades and on-call.