Agentic Index
F5 AI Guardrails vs Lakera (2026)
Choose F5 AI Guardrails, formerly CalypsoAI, for inference layer AI security with red teaming, defense, and monitoring in one platform, and choose Lakera for runtime protection against prompt injection, jailbreaks, and data leakage with continuous red teaming. That verdict is the Agentic Index coverage score, graded from each vendor's own published materials.
F5 publishes no price, while Lakera offers a free signup, and both now live inside larger security vendors, CalypsoAI's platform at F5 and Lakera at Check Point, so parent platform fit will often decide the deal. Evaluate each against your existing security stack rather than as standalone startups.
On the Agentic Index agent infrastructure ranking, F5 AI Guardrails clears the bar and Lakera does not. F5 AI Guardrails documents all five production contract capabilities in full; Lakera does not document model flexibility and routing in full. 34 of the 186 vendors in the lane clear it. See the agent infrastructure ranking
This comparison is published by Agentic Index, an independent agentic AI vendor research platform. F5 AI Guardrails and Lakera are each graded against the same 14 capability Agentic Index taxonomy, from the vendor's own public materials under the Agentic Index verification standard, alongside 956 researched vendors. No vendor pays for placement and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Choose F5 AI Guardrails if
- F5 is already in your infrastructure and consolidated vendor management matters
- You want model traffic routed through the security layer to providers you choose per project
- Red team campaigns should run on a schedule without anyone starting them
Choose Lakera if
- Check Point is already your security vendor, and it now owns Lakera
- You want to start free and self serve before any sales conversation
- Screening should run in a region you pick, with logs kept in the EU by default
| At a glance | F5 AI Guardrails | Lakera |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Agent infrastructure | Agent infrastructure |
| Entry price | Contact sales | Free to start · plan prices not readable (client-rendered page) · enterprise via sales |
| Free / trial | No free tier or trial is published for AI Guardrails or AI Red Team; F5 routes buyers to a demo and sales | lakera.ai offers "Start for free" sign-up at platform.lakera.ai; the free plan's limits were not readable |
| Pricing confidence | contact only | contact only |
| Feature | F F5 AI Guardrails |
L Lakera |
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
|
Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
Partial | Partial |
|
Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
|
Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
Full / Explicit | No / Not documented |
| Knowledge & context | ||
|
Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
|
Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
| Control & trust | ||
|
Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Solution readiness | ||
|
Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
Partial | Partial |
| Platform extensibility | ||
|
Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
Full / Explicit | No / Not documented |
|
APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Specialist automation | ||
|
Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing | F F5 AI Guardrails |
L Lakera |
|---|---|---|
|
Entry price Lowest public entry point |
Contact sales | Free to start · plan prices not readable (client-rendered page) · enterprise via sales |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Contact only | Contact only |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
not published | not readable; the pricing page renders client side |
|
Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
High variable cost | Medium variable cost |
|
Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
No free tier
|
Free tier
|
|
Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Sales call | Sales call |
CalypsoAI was acquired by F5 and Lakera was acquired by Check Point, both in 2025. F5 now sells CalypsoAI's platform as F5 AI Guardrails, while lakera.ai still sells directly with a free signup and its documentation carries Check Point branding. Buyers outside the F5 and Check Point ecosystems should weigh roadmap priorities accordingly.
More comparisons with F5 AI Guardrails or Lakera
Other matchups in agent infrastructure platforms
Not the pairing you were after? These compare a different set of agent infrastructure platforms on the same 14 capabilities.