F5 AI Guardrails
F5, Inc.
F5's runtime guardrails and AI Red Team testing for AI models, apps and agents, built from CalypsoAI and deployable on premises or air-gapped
Last checked October 15, 2026Quick facts: F5 AI Guardrails is an AI compliance vendor founded in 1996 and headquartered in Seattle, United States. The vendor publicly documents coverage for EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, and HIPAA. Pricing is available on request. Profile last checked October 15, 2026; sources are cited at the bottom of this page.
About F5 AI Guardrails
F5 AI Guardrails is F5's runtime security product for AI models, applications and agents. F5 sells it alongside F5 AI Red Team, its automated adversarial testing product, and presents the two as a pair: findings from Red Team can be turned into guardrail policies. Both come from CalypsoAI, the AI security company F5 announced it would acquire on September 11, 2025 for $180 million in purchase consideration, mostly cash. The deal closed on September 26, 2025. F5 introduced both products when it announced the deal had closed, and made them generally available in January 2026 as part of its Application Delivery and Security Platform. F5, Inc. was incorporated in 1996 and is based in Seattle; this profile lists the company's founding year and headquarters, as the directory does for other big-company products. F5 AI Guardrails blocks prompt injection and jailbreaks, detects and prevents leakage of personal data and custom data categories, filters toxic or harmful output, and audits or blocks unauthorized tool calls and actions by agents. Policies can be written in natural language. Every enforcement action is logged with attribution, and logs can be exported to third-party SIEMs. It works with any model and runs in AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, in private clouds, or on premises, including fully air-gapped environments. F5 AI Red Team sends a swarm of attacker agents to run static, prompt-based and multi-turn attacks, including indirect prompt injection and data-leakage tests on RAG applications. F5 says its attack library grows by more than 10,000 patterns a month. Red Team runs in the major public clouds or on premises as a certified Red Hat OpenShift operator. A feature called F5 AI Remediate drafts guardrails from Red Team findings, and a person approves each one before it goes live. **Gateway and platform** On June 22, 2026 F5 launched the F5 AI Security Platform, which groups AI governance, AI discovery, testing with AI Red Team and runtime protection with AI Guardrails, plus an audit trail across AI interactions. At the same time it announced the acquisition of SurePath AI, which adds network-based discovery of AI use, including shadow AI. F5's AI Gateway now combines a model gateway, an MCP gateway (with an MCP server registry and per-tool allow and deny controls) and AI Guardrails under one control plane. **Compliance coverage** F5 says Guardrails has automated auditing templates for GDPR, HIPAA and the EU AI Act, out-of-the-box policy controls aligned to PCI, PHI and the EU AI Act's prohibited-risk categories, and audit-ready logs. It also says Red Team findings can support compliance programs aligned with the NIST AI RMF and the EU AI Act, and it publishes an infographic aligning its products with the OWASP Top 10 for LLMs. We found no article-by-article mapping to the EU AI Act. **Who it's for** Large enterprises, including regulated financial services and healthcare organizations, that need AI guardrails they can host themselves or run air-gapped. F5 says both products are deployed at Fortune 500 companies. It also suits F5 customers who want AI controls on the same platform as their application delivery and API security.
Frameworks supported
Regulations, voluntary standards and compliance programs F5 AI Guardrails documents support for on their own materials. Chip shading reflects the strength of the claim, not an independent audit.
Regulation · EU · Phased — in force; high-risk rules deferred
Voluntary standard · US · voluntary
Regulation · United States · active
F5 AI Guardrails features
Capabilities F5 AI Guardrails markets publicly. Inclusion means the feature is documented on the vendor's site — not that it's best-in-class. Last checked October 15, 2026.
AI Guardrails
Runtime controls that constrain LLM input and output to enforce safety, compliance, and brand policies.
Prompt Injection Defense
Detection and mitigation of malicious prompts intended to bypass system instructions or exfiltrate data.
Data Leakage Prevention
Inspection of LLM outputs to block PII, secrets, and regulated data from leaving the boundary.
LLM Guardrails & Content Filtering
Runtime guardrails that block or redact unsafe prompts and responses in production LLM applications.
LLM Red Teaming
Automated adversarial testing of LLMs for jailbreaks, prompt injection, and unsafe outputs.
Agentic Red Teaming
Automated adversarial testing using AI agents to probe model and application weaknesses.
Runtime Enforcement
Inline policy enforcement on AI inputs and outputs at request time.
Policy Enforcement
Mechanism for applying organizational and regulatory policies to AI usage at runtime.
Audit Logging
Tamper-evident logging of governance events (approvals, model changes, policy decisions) required by EU AI Act Article 12 and similar regulations.
Human-in-the-Loop
Workflows that require human review or approval for AI decisions.
Industries served
Integrations
Documented by F5 AI Guardrails in public product materials.
- AWS Marketplace
- Kubernetes
- OpenAI API
- Anthropic API
F5 AI Guardrails pricing
F5 doesn't publish prices; its AI Guardrails page links to a free trial and a sales contact. AWS Marketplace lists F5 AI Guardrails (a container image for Amazon EKS) with a 12-month "F5 Guardrails AI" dimension at $100,000.00, but the listing says that price is a placeholder and that pricing is configured by F5 as a private offer. AWS Marketplace also lists F5 AI Red Team at $100,000.00 for a 12-month contract on its "Red Team Reports" dimension; the listing says cost scales with the number of report units bought and doesn't say how many reports that price covers.
Pros and cons of F5 AI Guardrails
Pros
- Can be self-hosted: Guardrails runs in public or private clouds or on premises, including fully air-gapped, and Red Team installs on premises as a certified Red Hat OpenShift operator.
- Testing feeds protection: Red Team findings become guardrail policies, and F5 AI Remediate drafts guardrails for a person to approve.
- Agent controls: Guardrails audits and blocks unauthorized tool calls and agent actions, and the AI Gateway adds an MCP gateway with per-tool allow and deny lists.
- Custom policies written in natural language, with enforcement logs that carry attribution and can be exported to a SIEM.
- F5 positions the products for regulated buyers, with auditing templates for GDPR, HIPAA and the EU AI Act and preset policy controls for PCI, PHI and EU AI Act prohibited-risk categories.
Cons
- No usable public price: the AWS Marketplace price for Guardrails is a placeholder, and Red Team is listed at $100,000.00 for a 12-month contract.
- Packaging is in flux: Guardrails is sold on its own, inside the AI Gateway and under the F5 AI Security Platform, so confirm what a quote includes.
- Compliance claims are general: F5 doesn't map controls to EU AI Act articles or NIST AI RMF functions, and we found no reference to MITRE ATLAS.
- We found no model-file or AI supply chain scanning on F5's product pages, which Cisco AI Defense and Prisma AIRS both document.
- F5's own product pages don't mention CalypsoAI, so buyers comparing it with older CalypsoAI material should check what changed.
Alternatives to F5 AI Guardrails
Cisco AI Defense
Compare F5 AI Guardrails vs Cisco AI Defense
Prisma AIRS
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Lakera
Compare F5 AI Guardrails vs Lakera
Prompt Security
Compare F5 AI Guardrails vs Prompt Security
HiddenLayer
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WitnessAI
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Frequently asked
What is F5 AI Guardrails?+
F5 AI Guardrails is F5's runtime security product for AI models, apps and agents. It blocks prompt injection and jailbreaks, prevents sensitive data leakage, filters harmful output, controls agent tool calls and logs every enforcement action. F5 sells it with F5 AI Red Team, which tests AI systems with automated attacks.
Is F5 AI Guardrails the same as CalypsoAI?+
It comes from CalypsoAI. F5 announced its intent to acquire CalypsoAI on September 11, 2025 and closed the deal on September 26, 2025. When it announced the close, F5 introduced F5 AI Guardrails and F5 AI Red Team, and both became generally available in January 2026.
What does F5 AI Red Team do?+
F5 AI Red Team runs automated adversarial testing against AI models, apps and agents: static, prompt-based and multi-turn attacks, including indirect prompt injection and RAG data-leakage tests. Findings can be turned into F5 AI Guardrails policies.
How much does F5 AI Guardrails cost?+
F5 doesn't publish prices. AWS Marketplace shows a $100,000.00 12-month figure for Guardrails but says it is a placeholder for a private offer, and lists F5 AI Red Team at $100,000.00 for a 12-month contract. F5's site offers a free trial.
Can F5 AI Guardrails run on premises?+
Yes. F5 says Guardrails runs in AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, in private clouds, or on premises, including fully air-gapped environments. F5 AI Red Team can run on premises as a certified Red Hat OpenShift operator.
What are the alternatives to F5 AI Guardrails?+
The closest alternatives in this directory are Cisco AI Defense and Prisma AIRS, which also came from acquisitions of AI security startups, and the AI security platforms Lakera, Prompt Security, HiddenLayer and WitnessAI.
Sources
- F5: AI Guardrails product page
- F5: AI Red Team product page
- F5: AI Gateway (model gateway, MCP gateway and AI Guardrails)
- F5: F5 to acquire CalypsoAI (September 11, 2025; $180 million)
- F5 blog: F5 completes acquisition of CalypsoAI, introduces F5 AI Guardrails and F5 AI Red Team (September 29, 2025)
- Business Wire: F5 AI Guardrails and F5 AI Red Team generally available (January 2026)
- F5 blog: AI Gateway and the F5 AI Security Platform (August 18, 2026)
- F5: F5 launches AI Security Platform; announces acquisition of SurePath AI (June 22, 2026)
- F5 DevCentral: Introducing F5 AI Red Team (January 15, 2026; AI Remediate)
- F5 Form 10-Q, quarter ended December 31, 2025 (CalypsoAI acquisition closed September 26, 2025)
- F5 Form 10-K, fiscal 2025 (incorporated 1996; Seattle headquarters)
- AWS Marketplace: F5 AI Guardrails (placeholder price; private offer)
- AWS Marketplace: F5 AI Red Team ($100,000.00 per 12-month contract)
- SecurityBrief UK: F5 launches AI Guardrails and AI Red Team (January 15, 2026)
- Frontier Enterprise: F5 wraps up US$180M acquisition of CalypsoAI (October 8, 2025)
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