Frequently Asked Questions
Ten common questions about prompt-injection vendor pricing, quote-only reality, OWASP coverage and TCO.
All questions
What is the cheapest published prompt-injection guardrail rate in 2026?
AWS Bedrock Guardrails publishes $0.08 per 1,000 text units for the prompt-attack filter, verified June 2026. Other Bedrock filter scopes (content, sensitive info, denied topics) cost more per 1K.
Why are so many AI security vendors quote-only?
Fourteen of the twenty vendors we track publish no public list price. Vendors prefer this because it lets them price-discriminate and bundle inside platform deals. It is bad for buyers because you cannot build a board paper from a contact-sales page.
Do you publish any quote-only vendor rates?
No. We will not infer a number we cannot source. Quote-only vendors get a Quote Only badge on every page they appear on; the only number we link to is the vendor's request form.
Is OWASP LLM Top 10 a real standard?
Yes. The 2025 edition lives at genai.owasp.org/llm-top-10/ and is the canonical LLM-attack taxonomy. We map every vendor on the site to its OWASP coverage.
What is the OWASP LLM01 ranking?
LLM01 is the number-one ranked risk for LLM applications and is prompt injection. Both direct and indirect variants are in scope.
How much should a small org spend on prompt-injection defence?
Under 50 seats with one or two LLM features, a free tier path plus 0.1 FTE engineering is typically enough. Around $25-30K per year all-in, mostly the FTE.
What does an AI red team engagement cost?
External one-off engagements are typically quoted in the $25-75K range; the midpoint we use for illustrative budgeting is $40K. Continuous red-team subscriptions are quote-only.
Is the EU AI Act in force?
Yes. Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 entered into force in August 2024. Different obligations apply at different staged dates; the general-purpose AI rules begin to apply in August 2026.
Does open source defend against prompt injection for free?
License-free, yes. NeMo Guardrails, Garak, Guardrails AI Hub and Promptfoo are all Apache 2.0. The FTE, infra and on-call costs to operate them are real and usually wipe out the saving above 1,000 LLM calls per minute.
What is the Lakera Cisco relationship in 2026?
Lakera maintains a strategic partnership with Cisco; some Lakera enterprise quotes route through Cisco AI Defense. Lakera Community is still a free tier on the public Lakera platform.