NeutralAI vs Presidio vs Private AI vs Nightfall
More than a PII detector. A control layer your buyers can approve.
Open-source detection is a useful ingredient. Regulated AI adoption needs the rest of the operating model: vaulting, policy enforcement, browser coverage, telemetry, and evidence.
Gateway boundary
NeutralAI sits before the model provider so policy can run before sensitive values leave the workflow.
Token vault
Sensitive values can be transformed into governed references instead of being sent as raw text.
Audit story
Operational evidence and benchmark artifacts give buyers something concrete to review.
Detection Accuracy
NeutralAI vs Presidio vs Private AI vs Nightfall
The table below uses publicly available vendor evidence. NeutralAI figures come from our 2026 benchmark post. Competitor figures are sourced from their own public documentation — different datasets and metrics mean numbers are not directly comparable. Read the full benchmark analysis →
| Metric | NeutralAI | Presidio (OSS) | Private AI | Nightfall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall F1 (published benchmark) | 99.8% | Baseline (open-source, uncalibrated) | Reported separately per entity — no single headline number in public sources | Not published as F1 |
| Holdout F1 | 98.4% | — | — | — |
| PERSON entity holdout F1 | 92.7% | — | — | — |
| Vendor precision claim (out of the box) | See holdout F1 above | Community-dependent; no official claim | Precision + recall published for ~45k-word dataset | 90–95% precision (vendor claim) |
| Methodology reproducibility | Public; entity scope + scorer documented | Open-source; reproducible by design | Vendor-published narrative benchmark | Marketing site claims; full methodology not public |
| Reversible masking (vault) | AES-256-GCM encrypted token vault | Not included — requires bespoke build | Available in paid tiers | Redaction focused; vault model differs |
| Gateway / proxy model | Yes — sits before LLM provider | Library only — proxy requires custom build | API service | DLP / CASB model, not a prompt proxy |
| Browser extension | Chrome + Edge (store-published) | Not included | Not included | Limited; DLP focus |
— = not published in comparable form. Precision and F1 are different metrics; a precision claim is not equivalent to an F1 score. See the benchmark post for methodology context.
Build vs Buy
The hard part is not masking once. It is making it safe to operate.
Give security a reason to say yes.
Start with the managed product, then choose the deployment model that fits your governance needs.