AI Governance Platforms Compared
An AI governance platform is the control point between your people, their AI agents and your systems: it finds the AI in use, ties each agent action to an identity, enforces policy on each tool call and keeps the audit trail. Below, six platforms are compared on seven criteria, and every fact links to the page it came from.
Four jobs every AI governance platform is judged on
Platforms in this category start from different places: some are gateways in the request path, some are security products that watch and enforce, some are compliance systems of record. What buyers need from them comes down to four jobs.
Discover
Find the AI clients, MCP servers, skills and agents in use, including the ones nobody approved.
Control access
Tie every agent action to a person or agent identity, and scope which tools each one can use.
Enforce
Block, redact or route for approval at the tool call, and catch prompt injection and exfiltration as it happens.
Prove
Keep an audit trail of who did what, through which agent, and map the evidence to the frameworks you answer to.
AI governance platforms, side by side
Each cell says whether the vendor's own public pages or docs describe the capability, in one line, with the source. Filter by what you can't do without. Where a vendor doesn't say, we mark it and tell you to ask; we don't guess, and we don't list prices or ratings no one has published.
| Platform | Agents & MCP | Identity | Audit | Policy | Shadow AI | Compliance | Deployment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RunlayerEnterprise AI control planeProfilevs Noma Securityvs Arcade.dev | DocumentedOne gateway for every MCP and LLM call, across Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, Codex and internal agents.Source: runlayer.com | DocumentedScopes access by user, group, role, agent, AI client, connector, tool, OAuth state and runtime context.Source: Runlayer for IT & Security | DocumentedFull audit trail with user and agent attribution, plus session traces.Source: runlayer.com | DocumentedPolicies for users, agents and tool calls; human approval; runtime scanners from alert-only to blocking.Source: runlayer.com | DocumentedAI Watch finds unmanaged MCPs, skills, plugins and client configs via MDM; Linux is detect-only.Source: Runlayer docs: Shadow AI | PartialVendor states SOC 2, HIPAA and GDPR compliance; AI framework mapping isn't described publicly.Source: runlayer.com/llms.txt | DocumentedSingle-tenant hosted, or self-hosted on AWS ECS, EKS or GKE.Source: Runlayer deployment overview |
| Noma SecurityAgent security and governanceProfilevs Runlayer | DocumentedEndpoint, SaaS and cloud agents, plus MCP servers, skills and tools.Source: noma.security | DocumentedAgent Access Control: approve, review or block; scope by user, team or tool sensitivity.Source: noma.security | DocumentedRuntime audit trails of prompts, tool calls, detections and enforcement actions.Source: Noma: AI Compliance & Regulation | DocumentedRuntime actions: stop, steer, alert, mask, killswitch; enforced through your existing control points.Source: noma.security | DocumentedAI-SPM and AI Asset Discovery find agents, MCPs, skills and tools across the organization.Source: noma.security | DocumentedMaps findings to NIST AI RMF, EU AI Act, ISO 42001, OWASP LLM Top 10 and MITRE ATLAS.Source: Noma: AI Compliance & Regulation | DocumentedOn-premises and SaaS deployment options.Source: Noma: AI Compliance & Regulation |
| Arcade.devAgent actions runtimeProfilevs Runlayer | DocumentedRuntime for agent tool calls across clients and frameworks; large pre-built MCP tool catalog.Source: arcade.dev | DocumentedIdP-based authentication; delegated authorization so agents act as their user within scope.Source: arcade.dev | DocumentedFull audit logs out of the box, per the vendor.Source: arcade.dev | DocumentedPre- and post-tool-call hooks to block, redact PII and stop data movement.Source: arcade.dev | Not documentedNot described on public pages. Ask Arcade.Source: arcade.dev | PartialSOC 2 compliant; AI framework mapping not described.Source: arcade.dev | DocumentedCloud, on-prem, air-gapped or hybrid.Source: arcade.dev |
| MintMCPMCP and LLM gateway · Now MintiveProfilevs MCP Manager | DocumentedMCP gateway plus LLM gateway; Agent Monitor for claude.ai, Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot and Codex.Source: Mintive docs: Introduction | DocumentedSSO via SAML/OIDC, RBAC, and per-agent delegated credentials.Source: mintmcp.com | DocumentedAudit trail of every tool call; export to SIEM or OTLP.Source: Mintive MCP Gateway | DocumentedMint Guard screening, monitoring then enforcing; destructive tools can be switched off; custom middleware.Source: Mintive docs: Introduction | PartialAgent Monitor observes supported clients; device-wide discovery not described.Source: Mintive docs: Introduction | PartialSOC 2 Type II, BAAs available; AI framework mapping not described.Source: mintmcp.com | PartialManaged cloud with EU and US residency; self-hosting on request.Source: Mintive docs: Introduction |
| MCP ManagerMCP gatewayProfilevs MintMCP | PartialMCP traffic from Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and custom agents; model calls not covered.Source: MCP Manager docs: Introduction | DocumentedPer-server brokered identities, OAuth enforcement, RBAC; SSO/SCIM on Enterprise.Source: MCP Manager plans | DocumentedAudit log entry at each hop; OpenTelemetry export on Enterprise.Source: MCP Manager docs: Introduction | DocumentedGateway rules on every request and response; PII filtering; DLP rules engine on Enterprise.Source: mcpmanager.ai | PartialShadow MCP addressed by funneling traffic through the gateway with MDM/EDR.Source: MCP Manager docs: Enterprise Strategy & Lockdown | PartialLogs positioned for HIPAA, GDPR and DORA; HIPAA-compliant logs on Enterprise.Source: mcpmanager.ai | PartialHosted only on GCP us-east1; no self-hosted build, no EU residency today.Source: MCP Manager docs: Hosting & Data Residency |
| Credo AIAI governance, risk and complianceProfile | PartialRegisters and assesses agents, models and apps; not in the runtime path for MCP calls.Source: credo.ai | Not documentedRuntime identity and credential scoping for agents not described. Ask Credo AI.Source: credo.ai | DocumentedAudit trails, reporting and evidence recording for governance workflows.Source: credo.ai | PartialPolicy engine and policy-to-code; inline per-call enforcement not described.Source: credo.ai | DocumentedShadow AI discovery and AI usage reporting.Source: credo.ai | DocumentedPolicy packs for EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001 and more.Source: credo.ai | Not documentedNot stated on the public site. Check the trust center.Source: Credo AI trust center |
The pairs buyers weigh
Each comparison runs both platforms through the same criteria and ends with who each one suits.
Runlayer vs Noma Security
Choose Runlayer if you want one product to discover shadow AI, run the MCP gateway, enforce policy at tool-call depth and roll agents out to employees.
Read the comparisonRunlayer vs Arcade.dev
Choose Runlayer if you are governing AI use across the company, including employees' own clients, shadow AI and agent rollout.
Read the comparisonMintMCP vs MCP Manager
Choose MintMCP if you want MCP and model calls governed together, ready-made role bundles, and EU or US data residency.
Read the comparisonSeven criteria, each one checkable
Every platform is held to the same definitions. Each criterion comes with what to ask the vendor and how to verify the answer yourself.
Coverage of agents and MCP
Which AI traffic the platform actually sits in front of or sees.
Identity and permissions
How the platform ties each AI action to a person or an agent identity, connects to your identity provider, and scopes what each user, group, agent and tool is allowed to do..
Audit logs
A record of who (person or agent) called which tool, with what inputs and outputs, what policy decided, and when; plus the ability to export that record to your SIEM or observability stack..
Policy enforcement
Whether the platform can act on a request as it happens.
Shadow AI discovery
Finding AI use you didn't approve.
Compliance mapping
Whether the platform maps its controls and evidence to frameworks such as the EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF and ISO/IEC 42001, and what attestations the vendor itself holds (SOC 2, HIPAA)..
Deployment
Where the platform runs.
Get told when the facts change
Vendors ship fast. We re-check every source in the comparison and email you when a platform adds or drops something that changes a row: a new deployment option, a framework mapping, a client it now covers.
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