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Comparison

Privian vs Cloudflare AI Gateway

How Privian compares to Cloudflare AI Gateway for privacy-first LLM routing, prompt-level data protection and sensitive-data masking.

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Quick summary

At a glance

Choose Privian if you want a privacy-first LLM gateway that masks supported personal and sensitive data before prompts reach GPT, Claude and other models.

Cloudflare AI Gateway

Choose Cloudflare AI Gateway if you are already invested in the Cloudflare platform and want edge-level analytics, caching and routing across providers.

Privian

Choose Privian if you want a privacy-first LLM gateway that masks supported personal and sensitive data before prompts reach GPT, Claude and other models.

Definitions

What each product is

Comparison

Side-by-side comparison

Grounded in publicly available product positioning. Where we are not confident, we say so.

CapabilityCloudflare AI GatewayPrivian
Primary positioningEdge AI gateway with caching, analytics and unified routingPrivacy-first LLM gateway with prompt-level data protection
Privacy-first routingNot a stated focusYes, core design goal
PII maskingNot a stated focusYes — supported personal/secret entities masked before provider call
Prompt-level data protectionNot a stated focusYes — deterministic placeholders, rehydrated in the response
BYOKSee vendor docsYes — provider keys stored AES-GCM, decrypted in-process
Gateway modelEdge gateway integrated with Cloudflare platformHosted gateway with a small JSON contract
Prompt injection protectionNot a stated focusNo claim
Tool / function callingSee vendor docsNot currently supported
Native streamingSee vendor docsNot currently supported (artificial chunking only)
Open sourceSee vendor docsClosed source (beta)
ObservabilityEdge analytics and logsStructural counters only; raw prompts never persisted
Pricing modelSee vendor pricingUsage-based plans, see /pricing
Enterprise orientationCloudflare enterprise terms applyDesigned for privacy-sensitive teams; HIPAA/SOC 2/PCI not claimed
Best fitTeams already standardised on Cloudflare infrastructureTeams that need supported PII masking and provider-agnostic BYOK routing

Architecture

Architecture differences

The application sends a raw prompt to the gateway. The gateway replaces sensitive values with placeholders and forwards the masked prompt to the LLM provider. The provider returns a response with placeholders. The gateway rehydrates placeholders to the original values before returning the response to the application. The provider never sees original values.ApplicationRaw promptPrivian gatewayMask · Route · RehydrateLLM providerSees masked prompt onlypromptmasked promptresponse w/ placeholdersrehydratedBYOK trust boundary
Prompt path through a privacy-first gateway— Original values never cross the BYOK boundary.

Cloudflare AI Gateway

Cloudflare AI Gateway runs on Cloudflare's edge network and integrates with the rest of the Cloudflare stack (Workers, R2, Vectorize). Its strengths are infrastructure-level: caching, analytics, rate limiting in front of providers.

Privian

Privian sits between your application and the model provider. Each request runs through detection → masking → BYOK provider call → rehydration in a single in-memory pass. The data plane is designed around minimising what reaches the provider rather than around routing breadth or orchestration.

Privacy & security

Privacy and security positioning

What Privian optimises for

  • Prompt-level data protection
  • Supported PII and sensitive-value masking
  • Privacy-first routing with BYOK
  • No raw-prompt persistence; structural observability only

What Privian does NOT claim

  • Prompt injection or jailbreak defence
  • HIPAA / SOC 2 / PCI certification
  • Tool / function calling security guarantees
  • Downstream model behaviour guarantees

When to choose

When to choose Cloudflare AI Gateway

  • You are already deeply invested in the Cloudflare ecosystem
  • Edge-level caching, analytics and rate limiting are your main needs
  • Prompt-level data protection is not a current requirement

When to choose

When to choose Privian

  • You need supported PII / sensitive-data masking applied before the provider call
  • You want a small JSON contract that is not coupled to a specific cloud stack
  • You want BYOK with no raw-prompt retention

Framework

Evaluation decision

  1. 01

    Assess Cloudflare AI Gateway

    Choose Cloudflare AI Gateway if you are already invested in the Cloudflare platform and want edge-level analytics, caching and routing across providers.

  2. 02

    Assess Privian

    Choose Privian if you want a privacy-first LLM gateway that masks supported personal and sensitive data before prompts reach GPT, Claude and other models.

  3. 03

    Validate scope

    Confirm required capabilities and current limitations against the evaluation criteria.

Transparency

Honest limitations

Privian is in active development. Listing what it does not do today is part of how we earn trust — expect this list to shrink over time.

  • No tool / function calling in the current beta
  • No native provider token streaming yet (stream: true is artificially chunked)
  • No OpenAI SDK drop-in compatibility
  • No claim to detect or block prompt injection or jailbreaks
  • No Norwegian fødselsnummer masking yet
  • No custom user-defined entity types yet
  • No HIPAA / SOC 2 / PCI certifications at this time

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Is Privian a replacement for Cloudflare AI Gateway?
Only if your primary need is privacy-first routing rather than edge infrastructure features. They target different layers — Cloudflare AI Gateway leans on its platform; Privian leans on the data plane.
Can Privian work alongside Cloudflare AI Gateway?
Yes. A common shape is to use Cloudflare for edge analytics and caching, and a privacy-first gateway specifically on the prompt path where supported entities must be masked.
Why would I choose a privacy-first LLM gateway?
Edge gateways improve latency, caching and observability but do not by themselves remove sensitive content from prompts. A privacy-first gateway does that step explicitly.
Who should use Privian?
Teams whose constraints are about what the model sees, not just how requests are routed at the edge.
Does Privian block prompt injection?
No. Privian focuses on prompt-level data protection — masking supported personal and sensitive values before they reach the model. It does not claim to detect or block prompt injection or jailbreaks. If injection defence is your primary requirement, a dedicated LLM firewall is a better fit.
Does Privian support native streaming?
Not in the current beta. The gateway accepts stream: true and returns artificially chunked text, but it does not pass through native provider token streams yet.

Related

Related resources

Other comparisons

Plans & pricing

See pricing for Privian — a privacy-first alternative to Cloudflare AI Gateway

BYOK, zero retention, prompt-level masking. Pricing is published transparently; Privian is in beta and limits may change.

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