Hive Moderation alternatives: what to consider and when to switch
Bottom line: Hive is a strong choice for visual moderation, with deep image and video coverage, live stream support and audio moderation. Look at alternatives if your problem is mostly text and you want labels like scams or self-harm, a way to flag messages that need conversation context, or an API you can start using without a sales conversation. Supervisor is built for that, though it is not a replacement for Hive's live stream and audio coverage.
Hive describes itself through several products: visual moderation, text moderation, audio moderation and a prompt-driven vision language model (VLM). People searching for alternatives are usually after one of three things, and only some are solved by switching.
Why people look for Hive alternatives
Access and contracts are not simple to read. Hive's pricing page shows pay-as-you-go rates for some products and "Contact Sales" for others. Its docs say text moderation and visual moderation require an annual contract. We could not reconcile those two statements, so confirm pricing details and what is self-serve directly with Hive.
Video is enabled through sales. Hive's pricing page says to fill out a contact form to enable video processing for visual moderation.
Text has a size cap and no batch endpoint. Hive's FAQ says text submissions are limited to 1024 characters and that its APIs do not currently support batch processing.
The text label set is narrower than community needs. Hive's text classes, per its classification docs, are sexual, hate, violence, bullying, drugs, child exploitation, gibberish, spam, promotions and phone numbers. Self-harm and scams are not on that list. Hive's VLM is prompted with your own policy, so it may be an alternative route for custom categories, but then the policy and prompt design are yours.
No Hive SDK in the docs we read. We found API examples and an OpenAI-compatible interface for the VLM, but no Hive-branded SDK package in the pages we checked.
The options at a glance
| Text | Images | Video | Audio | Where it is strongest | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hive | Yes, with severity levels | Yes | Yes, sales-enabled; live streams | Yes | Visual moderation and enterprise needs |
| Supervisor | 16 labels | Yes | Short clips, up to 60 s / 10 MB | Not covered here | Broad text labels, context, one API |
| AWS (Comprehend + Rekognition) | 7 toxicity labels | Yes | Stored video | Not covered here | Teams already on AWS |
The alternatives
Supervisor
Supervisor is what we make, so weigh this accordingly. It is a paid moderation API built for communities, games and platforms, with a live demo.
- 16 labels: profanity, toxicity, harassment, hate, insult, sexual, sexual (unlawful), sexual (explicit), sensitive, violence, self-harm, medical, spam, promotional, scam and illegal.
- Context flagging.
include_contextreturnsneeds_contextandcontext_labels. - Implicit harm through
implicit_labels. - Text, image and short video in one API, with non-English text translated before classification, including slang and mixed-language messages.
- Three model tiers, a 50% discount on batches of two or more, a username check endpoint, SDKs for Python, JavaScript, Go, Rust and Java, and a ready-made Discord bot.
- One plan: £13.99 a month, with £120 of credits and a 7 day trial.
Where it is weaker than Hive: Supervisor video is limited to 60 seconds and 10 MB, its API has no live stream input, and Hive offers audio moderation that we do not cover here.
Best for: community and platform text where scams, spam, self-harm and context matter.
AWS Comprehend and Rekognition
A pay-per-use pair for teams already on AWS: Comprehend for toxic text and Rekognition for images and stored video, with custom adapters and human review. See our AWS alternatives guide and review.
Best for: AWS-native teams with a visual-heavy policy.
Discord AutoMod
If the problem is a Discord server rather than your own product, Discord's built-in AutoMod is the free floor. See Discord AutoMod alternatives.
Do you need to leave Hive?
Not always. If visual moderation is your core job, particularly video or live streams, Hive is a sensible place to stay, and many teams run a text layer next to it. Switching text moderation to another provider while keeping Hive for visual content is a cleaner split than replacing everything.
Test on your own content. Paste a message into the live demo, read the API reference, or create a free account.