You need AI governance that holds up when the model is live, not just in the review meeting. Here is how Credo AI and Cranium AI compare across every move of the AI Trust Loop, checked against each vendor’s public docs.
Credo AI is an AI governance platform built around use-case intake, policy packs and approval workflows, and it describes itself as governance rather than security.
Cranium AI is an AI security and governance platform: it builds AI‑BOMs from source code, monitors and enforces policy on live prompts and responses, red teams models, and shares the evidence through AI Cards. Credo AI fits teams that need a governance workflow of record; teams that need governance and runtime security on one platform evaluate Cranium AI.
Every capability on this page, scored the same way for both platforms and rolled up by AI Trust Loop stage.
Cranium AI15.5/ 18AI‑BOMs from code repos
Registry plus MLOps connectors
Live prompt and response monitoring
Agent trace ingestion
Frameworks plus runtime policy
Policy packs and approval gates
Inline block or modify, red teaming
Agent Governor, research preview
AI Cards for vendors and customers
Audit reports and Vendor Portal
Scored across the 18 capabilities compared on this page: Documented = 1, Partial or Preview = 0.5, Unclear or Not documented = 0. Deployment and API rows are not scored. The capability list reflects what buyers ask about AI security and governance, and it includes areas where Credo AI leads.
Credo AI and Cranium AI overlap, but they were built to answer different first questions. Here is the short version.
| Cranium AI | Credo AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | AI security and governance platform | AI governance platform (“Trust Layer”) |
| Built for | CISOs and AI governance leads who need security and proof in one place | Central AI governance, risk and compliance teams |
| Company | Emerged from KPMG Studio in 2023. Short Hills, NJ | Founded March 2020. San Francisco, CA |
| How AI is found | Scans code repositories into AI‑BOMs; SIEM-based shadow AI view | Registry and intake, plus pulls from MLflow and Azure AI Foundry |
| Runtime control | Inline Block, Modify or Pass on prompts and responses | Agent Governor for Claude Code (research preview) |
| Security testing | Arena automated red teaming and guardrail testing | Azure AI Foundry evaluators recorded as evidence |
| Regulations | EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001 | 20+ standards claimed, incl. EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, NYC LL144, Colorado |
| Deployment | SaaS with US, EU and AU tenants | SaaS, or self-hosted Kubernetes with an air-gap mode |
Disclosure: Cranium AI publishes this comparison. Every Credo AI detail comes from public sources, mainly Credo AI’s own website, documentation, marketplace listings and press releases, plus a few third-party publications where cited, checked on October 29, 2026. Where we could not find public evidence, we say “Not documented,” never “No.” Spot something out of date? Tell us and we will fix it.
Organized by the AI Trust Loop: Discover, Observe, Govern, Secure and Prove. Cranium AI is held to the same standard as everyone else: if our docs don’t show it, we don’t claim it.
Find the AI you run
Scans GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and Azure DevOps (cloud and self-managed) into AI‑BOMs of models, datasets, packages, agents and static system prompts.1,2
AgentSensor maps agents, tools, handoffs, guardrails and MCP servers from source code across six agent frameworks.5
Shadow AI view built from connected SIEM activity: AI provider access, AI-enabled SaaS, AI web apps and embedded AI. No endpoint agent or browser extension.9
Watch what it does
Guardian inspects every prompt and response between your AI apps and the model, in Listen or Enforce mode.12,13
Lists “trace ingestion and continuous evaluation” of agent traces. No gateway between apps and models is documented.3
Tool Inspector, session reconstruction and agentic analytics: autonomy score, tool invocations and agent-to-agent handoffs.14,15
Agent Governor records prompts and tool calls in Claude Code sessions.16
Hold it to policy
EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF and ISO/IEC 42001, with self-attestation and automated answer scoring.17
AI Card reviews with approve, request changes or decline, plus an audit trail. No use-case intake questionnaires.20
Profiles set Block, Modify or Pass per signal, separately for prompts and responses, and per agent event type.23
Agent Governor ships curated postures (permissive, balanced, strict). Custom policies are “coming soon.”16
Defend it under attack
Enforce mode runs inline between your app and OpenAI, Anthropic Claude or AWS Bedrock models. New profiles start in Listen.13,24
PII, PHI, PCI, secrets, named entities and a custom blocklist, on prompts and responses.23,25
No runtime PII, PHI, PCI or secrets detectors are documented.26
Direct attacks at runtime: jailbreaking, instruction override, prompt leaking, role impersonation, direct command injection and goal hijacking at runtime. Indirect injection is tested in Arena before release.25,27
Azure AI Foundry jailbreak evaluations can be recorded as pre-deployment evidence. No runtime detection is documented.28
Arena runs fixed and adaptive multi-turn attacks across 9 LLM categories and 26 non-LLM task types, mapped to OWASP.29,27,30
The product page lists “automated red-teaming,” but no documentation describes it.3
No dependency vulnerability mapping found.3
Scans imported model files for malicious code and unsafe serialization.
No model-file scanning found.3
Scans agent config files in repositories (AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, .cursor, Copilot instructions) for exfiltration endpoints and hidden Unicode. No endpoint hooks.32
Agent Governor hooks into Claude Code sessions (research preview). No endpoint discovery documented.16
Show the evidence
AI Cards request, respond and publish AI‑BOMs, framework results and vulnerability data; My Vendors tracks every card received.33,34
Framework and AI System PDF exports, AI Cards and audit trails on review decisions. Runtime evidence is not packaged into AI Cards.37,20
Audit-ready documentation, decision records and policy pack report templates.38
How it runs
Hosted in US, EU and AU regions. No self-hosted option is documented.39
“Documented” means the vendor’s public docs or product pages describe the capability as available. “Preview” covers beta, private preview and research preview. “Not documented” means we found no public evidence; it may exist behind a login or on a roadmap. Numbers link to the sources at the foot of this page.
The fastest way to see the difference is to follow one AI system through each platform.
Teams register AI use cases, models, agents and vendors in the AI Registry, or pull model versions from MLflow and Azure AI Foundry.
Intake questionnaires apply risk scenarios and controls from policy packs. GAIA, Credo AI’s assistant, drafts answers for human review.
Use cases move through configurable workflow stages and approval gates, collecting evidence along the way.
Decision records and report templates produce audit-ready documentation. Vendors submit evidence through the Vendor Portal.
CodeSensor and AgentSensor scan your repositories and build AI‑BOMs of the models, datasets, packages, agents and MCP servers in your code. A SIEM-fed Shadow AI view and AI Recon cover the AI you didn’t build.
Guardian watches live prompts, responses and tool calls between your apps and the model, with session reconstruction, agent analytics and cost tracking.
Map each AI system to the EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF and ISO/IEC 42001, and turn policy into runtime profiles that decide per signal.
Enforce mode blocks or modifies risky prompts and responses inline. Model files are scanned for malicious code, Arena red teams models before release and Arena Shield tests the guardrails.
AI Cards share AI‑BOMs, framework results and vulnerability data with customers, vendors and auditors, and flag when they fall out of sync.
Buyers trust comparisons that admit what the other platform does well. So do we.
Policy packs span the EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF and ISO 42001 through NYC Local Law 144, Colorado and OMB M-25. IBM licenses them for watsonx.governance.18,19,42
Questionnaires, workflow stages and approval gates are the core of the product, and GAIA has been generally available since May 2026.21,22
The Vendor Portal lets suppliers answer against your own policy packs.35
Credo AI documents a self-hosted Kubernetes install with an air-gap mode for regulated environments.40
Cranium AI builds AI‑BOMs straight from your repositories and exports them as CycloneDX or SPDX. Credo AI does not document repository scanning.
Guardian applies Block, Modify or Pass to prompts and responses inline, today. Credo AI’s Agent Governor is a research preview for Claude Code.
Arena red teams models before release and Cranium ONE maps AI dependencies to known CVEs through OSV.
AI Cards carry AI‑BOMs, framework results and vulnerability data to the customers, vendors and auditors who ask for them.
Running both? The two can run side by side: Credo AI as the governance workflow of record, Cranium AI for discovery, runtime security and AI Card evidence. No native integration is documented; Cranium AI’s Public API exports AI‑BOMs, vulnerabilities and AI Card data for GRC sync.
Straight answers, kept current. Last verified .
Ask us anything →By its own description, no. Credo AI says a governance platform “should orchestrate the security signals it needs, not pretend to be a security tool.” Cranium AI covers both: it secures AI at runtime and governs it against the EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF and ISO/IEC 42001.
Only in preview. Credo AI’s Agent Governor, announced in July 2026, is a research preview with no production SLA and supports Claude Code. It can block, allow, escalate or advise on agent actions. Cranium AI’s Guardian applies Block, Modify or Pass to prompts and responses inline.
No AI‑BOM, CycloneDX or SPDX capability is documented on Credo AI’s website or developer docs as of October 2026. Cranium AI generates AI‑BOMs from source code and exports them as CycloneDX or SPDX.
Credo AI’s Shadow AI Discovery is in private preview, with a documented Splunk integration. Cranium AI’s Shadow AI view is built from connected SIEM activity.
Credo AI’s policy packs include the EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, SOC 2, NYC Local Law 144, Colorado SB21-169, OMB M-25 and a healthcare pack. Cranium AI maps AI systems to the EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF and ISO/IEC 42001.
Credo AI does not publish prices. Its AWS Marketplace listing prices the Enterprise Plan per AI use case governed, on 12-, 24- or 36-month terms by private offer.
Yes. Credo AI documents a self-hosted Kubernetes install with an air-gap mode. Cranium AI runs as SaaS with US, EU and AU regional tenants.
If you need runtime security alongside governance, Cranium AI combines AI‑BOM discovery, live prompt and response enforcement, red teaming and AI Card evidence in one platform, Cranium ONE.
How we built this page. We read Credo AI’s public website, product documentation, developer docs, marketplace listings and press releases, and Cranium AI’s own documentation at docs.cranium.ai, on October 29, 2026. We compare documented capabilities. Announced or preview features are labeled as such, and analyst placements are left out. Product names and trademarks belong to their owners; Credo AI has not reviewed or endorsed this page.
See how Cranium AI discovers, observes, governs, secures and proves every model, agent and vendor in your enterprise.
We use essential cookies to run this site, and — only with your permission — analytics and marketing cookies to improve it. You're the hero here; you stay in control. Privacy Policy.
