Llama Guard alternatives: hosted moderation APIs and other options
Bottom line: Llama Guard is a free-to-download safety classifier for LLM inputs and outputs, and you run it yourself. If you would rather call an API, or your content is user chat, comments and uploads rather than LLM traffic, the alternatives here are Supervisor, Moderation API and Sightengine. If you stay with Llama Guard, an older, smaller sibling exists in Llama Guard 3 8B. Different tools, and some teams run a classifier and an API together.
We make Supervisor, a hosted moderation API, so weigh this as an interested party's view. The Llama Guard facts come from the Hugging Face model cards, which are gated, so we read them as extracted text. We cite them below and recommend a check against the live page. Read on 26 October 2026.
What Llama Guard is
Llama Guard 4, the version covered here, is described on its card as "a natively multimodal safety classifier with 12 billion parameters". It is "designed to be used in an integrated system with a generative language model", and it classifies LLM inputs (prompt classification) and LLM responses. It predicts safety labels on 14 categories based on the MLCommons safety taxonomy.
| Code | Category | Code | Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| S2 | Non-violent crimes | S9 | Indiscriminate weapons |
| S3 | Sex-related crimes | S10 | Hate |
| S4 | Child sexual exploitation | S11 | Suicide and self-harm |
| S5 | Defamation | S12 | Sexual content |
| S6 | Specialized advice | S13 | Elections |
| S7 | Privacy | S14 | Code interpreter abuse (text only) |
It takes text and multiple images. Its card says non-English languages tested were French, German, Hindi, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Thai. Weights are gated: you accept the Llama 4 Community License on Hugging Face. There is no price; you pay for your own hardware.
Why people look for alternatives
You have to host it. A 12 billion parameter model means a GPU and a serving stack. The card says it "can be run on a single GPU", and we do not quote a specific memory figure because we could not confirm one from a primary source.
It is built for LLM safety. The taxonomy covers things like defamation, elections and specialised advice. It has no categories named spam, scam, promotional, profanity or insult, which are everyday problems in a community.
No managed features. There is no queue, dashboard, SDK, billing or support to read about on the card. It is a model.
Its tested languages are a short list. Language coverage beyond those tested is unconfirmed.
The alternatives at a glance
| Option | What it is | Inputs | Pricing shape | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Llama Guard 4 | Open-weight classifier you host | Text, multiple images | Your own GPU | LLM safety, control |
| Llama Guard 3 8B | Smaller earlier version | Not covered here | Your own GPU | Pairing with Llama 3.1 |
| Supervisor | Hosted moderation API plus Discord bot | Text, image, video | £13.99 a month, £120 of credits | Community content, context, scams |
| Moderation API | Hosted detection plus review platform | Text, image, video, audio | From $79 a month | Review queue, rules |
| Sightengine | Hosted visual-first API | Image, video, text, audio | From $29 a month | Image and video breadth |
Llama Guard 3 8B
Llama Guard 3 8B is an 8 billion parameter model on 14 categories (S1 to S14 as above), recommended to be "deployed along with Llama 3.1" and under the Llama 3.1 Community License. Its card lists English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Thai. Smaller, so lighter to host.
Best for: teams already running Llama 3.1.
Supervisor
Supervisor runs the models for you.
- 16 labels aimed at community harm: profanity, toxicity, harassment, hate, insult, sexual, sexual (unlawful), sexual (explicit), sensitive, violence, self-harm, medical, spam, promotional, scam and illegal.
- Context:
include_contextreturnsneeds_contextandcontext_labels. Implicit harm:implicit_labels. - Text, image and video in one API; non-English text is translated before classification, including slang and mixed-language messages.
- Three tiers (Observer, Sentinel, Arbiter), half-price batches, a username check endpoint, SDKs for Python, JavaScript, Go, Rust and Java, and a ready-made Discord bot.
It is not an LLM guardrail built to sit around a generative model, and its categories do not include things like elections or defamation.
Best for: apps and communities moderating user-generated content.
Moderation API and Sightengine
Moderation API adds a hosted review queue and author management around detection, with plans from $79 a month for 10,000 messages. Sightengine has the widest visual coverage, 136 classes across 26 models, from $29 a month. See our Moderation API and Sightengine alternatives posts.
What you will struggle to replace
Control. A self-hosted model runs on your infrastructure, so you set the serving, the data path and the deployment. A hosted API, including ours, means sending content to a third party. If that is a requirement, a hosted API is the wrong answer and no alternative here changes that.
You also lose Llama Guard's zero per-call fee. The weights are free; whether your hardware costs less than a plan depends on your volume, and we do not have a number for it.
Do you need to switch?
Not if you are guarding an LLM and already run GPUs. Consider a hosted API if your content is users talking to each other. Compare them in the direct comparison, try the live demo, read the API reference, or create a free account.
Sources
- Llama Guard 4: model card
- Llama Guard 3 8B: model card
- Moderation API: homepage and pricing
- Sightengine: pricing and classes