Kosmoy vs Giskard: AI Testing, Red Teaming and Governance (2026)
Giskard is the leading European open-source AI testing and red-teaming tool. Kosmoy is an AI management platform with red teaming built in. Both are AI-Act-minded; one is the deeper testing library, the other turns findings into enforced controls and audit evidence.
Alejo HernandezCTO, KosmoyGiskard and Kosmoy are the two most European-minded names in this comparison set, and they approach AI safety from opposite ends. Giskard is an open-source testing library plus an enterprise Hub for continuous red teaming — hallucination, prompt injection, bias and data-leakage detection, an adversarial Scan generated from a plain-language app description, and the multilingual Phare safety benchmark, part-funded by the European Commission. Kosmoy is a full AI management platform — inventory, gateway, guardrails, containment, compliance — that added its own evaluation and red-teaming suite in 2026.
This page compares the two honestly, axis by axis, with every Giskard claim cited. The short version, and it is an unusual one for a Kosmoy comparison: Giskard is the deeper testing tool on its own spoke, scoring higher than Kosmoy on evaluation and red teaming. Kosmoy wins by turning what a test finds into an enforced control and an audit record, on a platform you host yourself.
Who each product is for
Giskard
Giskard speaks to AI quality and safety engineers, especially in Europe. Its open-source library (Apache-2.0) makes adoption a developer decision — hallucination, prompt injection, bias and data-leakage detectors, a vulnerability Scan that builds adversarial suites from a description of the app, and mapping to the OWASP LLM Top 10. The Giskard Hub adds continuous red teaming, annotation and scheduled scans, and the Phare benchmark gives it research credibility.
Part-funded by the European Commission and Bpifrance, Giskard is the most AI-Act-native testing vendor in this set — a natural fit for teams that want open-source testing with a European provenance.
Kosmoy
Kosmoy speaks to the people accountable for AI as a whole: CTOs, CISOs and AI governance leads in regulated industries. Its unit of work is the AI system — registered with an owner and a risk tier, enforced through the gateway, tested by the built-in evaluation and red-teaming suite, and, where it acts, contained in an Action Capsule.
It is a full platform you run single-tenant in your own Kubernetes, air-gap capable — in production at Italy's central bank and banking regulator and Europe's largest defence and aerospace group.
The capability radar
Each spoke is one capability, scored 0–10. Unusually for a Kosmoy comparison, the competitor leads the headline axis: Giskard scores Testing, Evals & Red-teaming 8 to Kosmoy's 7, because a dedicated open-source testing library out-tools a governance platform's built-in suite on its own spoke. Kosmoy's shape is far wider — gateway, guardrails, inventory, containment and compliance all go to Kosmoy, and sovereignty (10 vs 8) edges to it as single-tenant self-hosted software.
- Giskard
- Kosmoy
| Capability (0–10) | Giskard | Kosmoy | Notes on Giskard |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI Inventory & Discovery | 1 | 9 | Projects and datasets live inside the tool; no org-wide registry or shadow-AI discovery. |
| Security & Shadow AI | 6 | 8 | Red-teams for prompt injection, jailbreaks and data leakage mapped to OWASP LLM Top 10 — testing, not runtime security posture. |
| Observability & FinOps | 3 | 7 | Scan reports and Hub dashboards over test runs; no production tracing, FinOps or spend attribution. |
| Gateway & Policy Control | 0 | 8 | No proxy or policy point; Giskard evaluates models rather than intercepting live traffic. |
| Guardrails & Runtime Safety | 2 | 8 | Detects unsafe behavior in testing; enforces no runtime blocking guardrail on calls. |
| Agent Containment | 0 | 9 | No sandboxing, kill switch or scoped credentials — it tests systems built and run elsewhere. |
| Compliance & Audit | 5 | 9 | The most EU-AI-Act-aligned pure-play tester (EC/Bpifrance-backed) and OWASP-mapped, but no ISO 42001 / AI Act evidence-bundle automation. |
| Testing, Evals & Red-teaming | 8 | 7 | Core strength: OSS testing library plus Hub continuous red teaming across hallucination, prompt injection, bias and data leakage, anchored by the Phare benchmark. |
| Agent Building | 1 | 6 | No agent-building tooling; Giskard tests AI systems, it does not build them. |
| Deployment Sovereignty | 8 | 10 | OSS library self-hosts anywhere and the Hub offers an on-prem option; EU-headquartered — a strong data-residency story. |
Bold marks the highest score on each row. 10 is reserved for categorical architectural facts; specialists are expected to outscore platforms on their own spoke.
Where Giskard wins
Open-source testing depth. Giskard's Apache-2.0 library and its vulnerability Scan — which generates adversarial test suites from a plain-language description of the application — give it more open, extensible testing breadth than Kosmoy's built-in suite, which is why it scores 8 on the evaluation and red-teaming axis to Kosmoy's 7.
A published safety benchmark. The multilingual Phare benchmark (hallucination, bias, harmfulness, jailbreak resistance), built with Google DeepMind, gives Giskard research standing Kosmoy does not claim.
Open-source adoption path. A developer can pip-install Giskard and run a scan today; Kosmoy has no open-source tier and runs through enterprise procurement.
Framework portability. As an open library, Giskard drops into existing CI and notebook workflows without adopting a platform — lighter-weight than standing up a management platform.
Where Kosmoy wins
Enforcement, not just findings. Giskard reports what it finds; the fix is another system's job. Kosmoy turns a red-team finding into an enforced guardrail at the gateway — the attack that landed is blocked on live traffic, on the same platform.
Inventory and shadow AI. Giskard tests the apps you point it at. Kosmoy's four registries inventory every AI system, model, MCP server and agent — including external agents reconciled from Foundry, Bedrock, Vertex, Salesforce and ServiceNow — each with an owner and a risk tier.
Agent containment. Giskard has no runtime containment. Kosmoy's Action Capsule sandboxes agents, MCP servers and private models with per-task credentials and a kill switch.
Compliance evidence. Both are AI-Act-minded, but Giskard produces test results, not framework-mapped evidence. Kosmoy files evaluation and red-team runs as EU AI Act, ISO/IEC 42001 and NIST AI RMF evidence bundles alongside the system's risk classification.
One platform, in your perimeter. Giskard is a testing tool among your other tools; Kosmoy is a single self-hosted platform where testing, enforcement, inventory and evidence share one identity, policy and audit trail — scored 10 on sovereignty.
Deployment and pricing model
| Giskard | Kosmoy | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary shape | Open-source AI testing library + red-teaming Hub | AI management platform with evaluation and red teaming built in |
| What happens to a finding | Reported; remediation handed to another system | Becomes an enforced guardrail at the gateway and an audit record |
| Hosting model | OSS library self-host anywhere; Hub SaaS or on-prem | Self-hosted only — single-tenant, your own Kubernetes, air-gap capable |
| Open source | Apache-2.0 library; Hub proprietary | Proprietary |
| Compliance evidence | Test results; AI-Act-aligned, but not framework-mapped evidence bundles | EU AI Act, ISO/IEC 42001 (aligned), NIST AI RMF evidence bundles |
| Pricing model | OSS free; Hub enterprise by quote | Enterprise subscription; no self-service tier |
Last verified July 31, 2026 against each vendor's public documentation.
Running them together
Giskard and Kosmoy pair naturally, and for EU teams it is an attractive all-European stack. Giskard runs as the open-source testing library in the build pipeline — scanning for hallucination, injection and bias early, in CI. Kosmoy is the governed runtime around production: it inventories the system, enforces policy at the gateway, contains it if it acts, runs its own red-team campaigns against the deployed assistant, and files everything as compliance evidence. Giskard finds weaknesses in development; Kosmoy makes sure the deployed system enforces the fix and can prove it. If the requirement is one self-hosted platform that both tests and enforces, that is Kosmoy; if it is the deepest open-source testing library, keep Giskard in the pipeline.
Questions buyers ask
Is Kosmoy better than Giskard?
Not on open-source testing depth — Giskard is the deeper tool there, scoring 8 on the evaluation and red-teaming axis to Kosmoy's 7, with a broader detector set, a Scan that generates adversarial suites from a description, and the published Phare benchmark. Kosmoy is the stronger platform everywhere else: it turns a finding into an enforced gateway guardrail, inventories every AI system, contains agents that act, and produces EU AI Act evidence. Giskard finds the weakness; Kosmoy enforces and proves the fix.
Both are EU-friendly — how do they differ on the EU AI Act?
Giskard is AI-Act-native as a testing tool: its scans map to risks the Act cares about, and it publishes safety research. Kosmoy is AI-Act-native as a governance platform: it classifies each system's risk tier, enforces guardrails at runtime, and files evaluation and red-team results as EU AI Act, ISO/IEC 42001 and NIST AI RMF evidence bundles. Giskard helps you test for robustness (Article 15); Kosmoy helps you test, enforce and document it as evidence across the lifecycle.
Does Kosmoy's red teaming replace Giskard?
For many teams it overlaps enough to choose one, but they are not identical. Giskard is a broader, more open testing library that drops into CI. Kosmoy's red teaming is built for the deployed system — single- and multi-turn attacks against the live assistant with its guardrails, scored by a policy-compliance judge, with per-case remediation and a false-refusal rate, feeding enforcement and evidence. If you want open-source testing in the pipeline, keep Giskard; if you want red teaming wired to runtime enforcement and audit, Kosmoy covers it.
Can I run Giskard and Kosmoy together?
Yes, and for EU teams it is a coherent all-European stack. Giskard scans for issues early in development as an open-source library; Kosmoy governs production — inventory, gateway enforcement, containment, its own red-team campaigns and compliance evidence. Development-time testing stays in Giskard; the governed runtime and its evidence stay in Kosmoy.
Sources
Every factual claim about another vendor on this page traces to that vendor's own published material or a named third-party source below.
- Giskard — Phare LLM safety benchmark — accessed July 31, 2026
- Giskard — accessed July 31, 2026
- Kosmoy AI Red Teaming — accessed July 31, 2026
- Kosmoy AI Compliance — accessed July 31, 2026
- OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications — accessed July 31, 2026
See the platform behind the scores
Kosmoy puts an inventory, a policy gateway and a containment sandbox around every AI your teams run — in your own Kubernetes.
Or email sales@kosmoy.com.