Compared with the products on your shortlist.
- Named products
- 22
- Categories they sit in
- 4
- Category arguments above them
- 7
- Days to read, run and attack it, before a purchase order
- 30
Whose claims these are
The column describing another product paraphrases that vendor’s own published material, on a date printed at the top of each table. Nothing here has been independently tested, products in this category ship quickly, and a capability absent from a vendor’s documentation is not the same thing as a capability the product lacks. Every page links to the vendor’s own documentation.
If you read two, read these two
Token Observe vs Keycard, then Token Observe vs LiteLLM. The first is named in the product’s own market review as the closest direct competitor on authorisation, and the page concedes territory to it. The second is the objection most readers arrive with: we already run a proxy, the base URL is already swapped, and the spend is already counted.
AI security platforms and AI firewalls
Use Token Observe to govern the requests you route through its gateway. Broader AI security coverage belongs alongside it; pattern-based detection remains heuristic. The category argument is the better page if you have not yet shortlisted a product.
Keycard
Keycard decides whether an agent gets a credential for this tool call. Token Observe decides on the payload, then has a second tool check what a contracted action did.
On agent authorisation itself, Keycard is the better purchase for most readers, and Token Observe’s own roadmap agrees
Palo Alto Prisma AIRS
Prisma AIRS scans the content and caps what a workspace may spend and call. Token Observe decides whether one named agent may make this exact call, and who approved it.
On detection, on estate coverage, on gateway breadth, and on the assurance a procurement team can read, Prisma AIRS is the better purchase for most readers
Cisco AI Defense
AI Defense attaches a policy to an application’s connection and inspects what crosses it, tool calls included. Token Observe attaches permissions to an agent and decides what it may do.
For most readers shopping an AI security platform, Cisco AI Defense is the better purchase, and Token Observe’s own roadmap agrees
Zenity
Zenity gets into the path the agents are already on. Token Observe is the path the agents are pointed at.
On estate coverage and on assurance, Zenity is the better purchase for most readers
Noma Security
Noma sets which agents, tools and data are approved and enforces that at the control points you already run. Token Observe sits in the request path and decides on the call itself: its arguments, its price and the approval for that exact payload.
On coverage, on estate-wide access control, on detection and on the assurance a procurement team asks for, Noma is the better purchase for most readers
Lakera
Lakera tells your application the content is an attack. Token Observe is the thing that refuses to send it.
On prompt-injection defence itself, the category this page sits in, Lakera is the better purchase by a wide margin
WitnessAI
WitnessAI stands in front of the interaction and classifies the intent. Token Observe stands in front of the API call and decides the action, its cost and its evidence.
On coverage of the estate and on detection quality, WitnessAI is the better purchase for most readers, and Token Observe’s own roadmap names it as a source to consume from rather than a rival
LLM gateways and AI proxies
Decide whether you need to carry model requests, explain the AI bill, or govern one agent’s next call. The category argument is the better page if you have not yet shortlisted a product.
LiteLLM
Keep LiteLLM where it meets your gateway needs. Compare Token Observe when your IT team also needs provider billing evidence and scoped agent decisions.
For most teams shopping for a gateway, LiteLLM is the better purchase
Portkey (Prisma AIRS AI Gateway)
Compare the AI bill you can explain and the routed requests you need to govern, alongside your existing Portkey gateway.
For most teams shopping for an AI gateway, Portkey is the better purchase
Kong AI Gateway
Kong decides which caller may use which tool. Token Observe decides whether this one call, with these arguments, goes ahead, and checks afterwards that it happened. If you already run Kong, the first is nearly free and the second is the reason to read further.
If Kong is already your data plane, Kong AI Gateway is the better purchase for most readers
Cloudflare AI Gateway
Cloudflare’s gateway decides what the payload contains. Token Observe decides whether the agent that sent it was allowed to.
For most teams putting a first control in front of model traffic, Cloudflare is the better purchase
Agent Router
Both hold the request. One charges the token budget once the response completes; the other reserves the money before the request leaves your network.
For connectivity at scale on Kubernetes, Agent Router is the better choice, and the open-source project is free
MuleSoft Omni Gateway
Both refuse the call inline, and both now say they govern agents. MuleSoft governs an agent as an instance in API Manager; Token Observe governs it as a record with a named owner, a budget and a human gate.
If you already run Anypoint Platform, MuleSoft is the better purchase
LLM observability, tracing and evaluation
Match the tool to the question: what the provider charged, what an agent did, or what it may do next. The category argument is the better page if you have not yet shortlisted a product.
LangSmith
LangSmith’s callback handler watches the call from beside it, and their newer LLM Gateway now stands in it too. The differences that remain are narrower than they were.
For the loop a developer works in every day, LangSmith is the right tool and Token Observe is not competing for it
Langfuse
Keep Langfuse for your tracing and evaluation workflow. Compare Token Observe for the billing evidence and routed controls your IT team needs.
For most teams shopping for LLM observability, Langfuse is the better purchase, and the certification gap alone decides it for many
Arize
Arize is instrumented into your application and reads what it did. Token Observe is a hop your agents call through and decides what they may do.
For the work an AI engineering team does every day, Arize is the right purchase
Datadog LLM Observability
Datadog puts LLM spans beside the rest of your telemetry. Token Observe puts a verdict in front of the call. Datadog also sells a verdict, and the comparison turns on where it is made.
If you already run Datadog, Datadog wins the observability half
Braintrust
Braintrust is in the request path too. What it does there is deliver the call and record it; what it blocks is the release that would have made the call worse.
On evaluation, on assurance and on deployment maturity, Braintrust is ahead, and for most readers it is the right purchase
Cloud-provider native agent controls
If every agent, model and tool lives in one cloud, use that cloud’s controls. The argument here is for the estate that does not. The category argument is the better page if you have not yet shortlisted a product.
Amazon Bedrock AgentCore
AgentCore enforces Cedar on tool calls at its own gateway boundary. Token Observe enforces one rule set on model and tool calls across six providers, from a process you run. The estate decides which you want.
If your agents, tools and targets are inside AWS, AgentCore is the better purchase
Microsoft Entra Agent ID
Entra decides which identity the agent holds and whether it may be issued a token. Token Observe decides the individual call that token does not cover.
For agent identity itself, Entra Agent ID is the better purchase for most readers, and Token Observe’s roadmap concedes it in writing
Microsoft Agent 365
Agent 365 governs the agent as an identity in your tenant. Token Observe governs the payload that agent sends to a model provider.
For an organisation already on Microsoft 365, Agent 365 is the better purchase
ServiceNow AI Control Tower
AI Control Tower governs your AI estate and who may use each part of it. Token Observe reads what one call carries and rules on it before governed provider egress.
If you already run ServiceNow, AI Control Tower is the better purchase, and the roadmap named ServiceNow before this page did
- OpenAIChat Completions, Responses and embeddings
- AnthropicMessages, including the x-api-key dialect
- Google GeminiNative Gemini ingress
- OpenRouterWith caller-controlled route selectors refused before egress
- Amazon BedrockFor estates that will not egress to a model vendor directly
- Azure OpenAIDeployment-name routing under the same policies
- Your own endpointAny OpenAI-compatible endpoint you host
Cloud setup offers OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and Google. Use separate billing and inference credentials.
The category arguments
7 pages about what a whole class of product does and does not do, led by the one most readers are choosing against.
spreadsheets and billing consoles
Finance owns the total. This owns the shape: a vendor, a tool, a team and an owner email on every line.
LLM gateways
Decide whether you need to carry model requests, explain the AI bill, or govern one agent’s next call.
LLM observability
Match the tool to the question: what the provider charged, what an agent did, or what it may do next.
AI security platforms
Use Token Observe to govern the requests you route through its gateway. Broader AI security coverage belongs alongside it; pattern-based detection remains heuristic.
cloud-native controls
If every agent, model and tool lives in one cloud, use that cloud’s controls. The argument here is for the estate that does not.
building it yourself
For a small estate, a few hundred lines of proxy is usually the right answer. The cost arrives later, and it arrives in specific places.
doing nothing
With three agents, no regulated data and no incident, doing nothing is often the correct decision. This page is about what changes it.
Everything on these pages about another product is that vendor’s own material. Everything Token Observe does not claim about itself (no independent penetration test, no certification, no availability commitment, no witnessed bake-off) is published as one list with a named acceptor against each risk.
Review the product limitsTell us what is already in your stack.
Tell us what your existing tools cover and where you need help. We can work through whether Token Observe adds something useful.