Pricing models
How Vendors Price LLM / AI Application Security
Seven pricing-model patterns. Hyperscaler-native uses pay-per-call; specialists are mostly quote-only; open-source is free at license.
7
Distinct pricing models
3
Hyperscaler pay-per-call
14
Quote-only
4
Open-source free
Taxonomy
Per-1K text records
Azure Prompt Shields (S0)
1 record = up to 1,000 unicode chars.
Per-1K text units
AWS Bedrock Guardrails
Separate line item per filter scope.
Per million tokens
Google Cloud Model Armor
First 2M tokens / month free.
Per-seat-monthly
Some specialist runtime guardrails quote this way
Quote only at the headline.
Flat-monthly subscription
Lakera Community (free), Promptfoo Cloud
Tiered limits per month.
Open-source-free
NeMo Guardrails, Garak, Guardrails AI Hub, WhyLabs whylogs
FTE and infra remain buyer cost.
Quote-only
14 of 20 vendors tracked
Bundled inside platform deals; no list price.
Negotiation notes
- Quote-only vendors usually offer multi-year discounts; ask for 3-year list before signing 1-year.
- Hyperscaler rates are list, not negotiated; private pricing requires enterprise discount agreements.
- Free OSS tiers exist precisely so vendors can upsell to managed Pro; do not assume forever-free.
- Per-record and per-token rates look different but converge once you account for unit definitions.
Last verified June 2026Source: vendor pricing pages. See /methodology.