Arcjet vs Zenity

How do Arcjet and Zenity differ?

Zenity is an AI agent security and governance platform for enterprise security teams. Zenity inventories agents across software as a service (SaaS) platforms such as Microsoft Copilot Studio and Salesforce Agentforce, cloud agent builders, and coding agents, then assesses their posture and detects or blocks risky actions. Arcjet is an AI agent runtime security platform that enforces policy in the path of each action: inside your code for the agents you build, and in the hooks that Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and OpenAI Codex already fire. The key difference is who builds the agent. Zenity is strongest on agents that business users configure in SaaS platforms, and Arcjet enforces inside agents that engineers write in code and on developers' coding agents. Choose Zenity when most of your agents live in low-code and SaaS platforms that you configure but don't code. Choose Arcjet when you build agents in code or need one policy on your developers' coding agents, with self-serve pricing and no proxy to route through.

Arcjet publishes this comparison. Competitor details come from Zenity's public documentation, reviewed on September 25, 2026. Products change, so check the linked sources before you decide.

Zenity and Arcjet at a glance

Zenity covers SaaS, low-code, cloud, and coding agents from one enterprise platform, and Arcjet enforces in your code and in coding-agent hooks. The following table compares the two products across 12 areas.

What is Zenity?

Zenity is an AI agent security company that describes itself as "the AI security and governance platform purpose-built for AI agents." The Zenity platform builds a live inventory of agents across SaaS, custom, and endpoint deployments. Zenity evaluates agent configuration and permissions before deployment (AISPM), and it detects runtime threats and blocks unsafe actions (AIDR). Zenity's AIDR covers direct and indirect prompt injection and sensitive data leaving through conversations, tool calls, or encoded payloads.

Zenity started in low-code security. Its $38 million Series B announcement in October 2024 described an agentless platform for enterprise copilots and low-code development. Zenity's coverage of Microsoft platforms reflects that history.

For Copilot Studio, Zenity announced general availability of inline prevention on November 18, 2025. Copilot Studio calls an external threat detection endpoint before each tool invocation. Microsoft's documentation marks that feature as preview and applies it only to generative-orchestration agents. By default, the Copilot Studio agent proceeds if no decision arrives within one second.

In July 2026, Zenity added Runtime Boundaries, which evaluates agent actions against rules in detect mode, prevent mode, or with a kill switch that disables an agent's tools and data access. For coding agents, Zenity names Claude Code and Cowork, Codex, GitHub Copilot, and Cursor, and uses native agent hooks, the Zenity MCP gateway, and OpenTelemetry.

Zenity's coding-agent post, published July 29, 2026, states that detection and blocking happen at the PreToolUse hook, with no endpoint sensor. The August 2026 product update added hooks for GitHub Copilot and Codex, and a Boundaries CLI for managing policies as version-controlled files. The MCP security module governs MCP traffic at a gateway.

Zenity raised a $125 million Series C led by Norwest on August 3, 2026, and has operations in New York and research and development in Tel Aviv. Zenity doesn't publish pricing, and you book a demo for a quote.

What is Arcjet?

Arcjet is an AI agent runtime security platform. Arcjet discovers the agents that run in your organization, enforces policy across every action, prompt, and tool call, and keeps the evidence of what happened. Arcjet enforces in the path of the action, in code or in the agent's hook, not on the network.

For coding agents, Arcjet enforces policy on Claude Code, GitHub Copilot (CLI and cloud agent), Cursor, and OpenAI Codex through the hooks each agent already fires, with no SDK and no code change. One policy applies across all four agents and decides before the tool call runs. You choose when the policy runs with Execute on: Tool call, Prompt, or Model switch.

Arcjet's 12 starter policies cover destructive commands, history rewrites, protected paths, credential access, piped installers, MCP allowlists, egress allowlists, destination threats, model allowlists, sensitive information, prompt injection, and npm publish. You install the hooks through managed settings or mobile device management (MDM), so developers can't remove them without administrator access. For visibility without a hook, Arcjet ingests OpenTelemetry and the Claude Compliance API.

For agents and applications you build, Arcjet Guards run inside your code. The JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, and Go SDKs call guard() on tool calls, queue consumers, MCP handlers, and any action with no HTTP request, and protect() on HTTP routes. Integrations cover 15 frameworks: the Claude Agent SDK, Claude Managed Agents, Cloudflare Think, CrewAI, Genkit, Google ADK, LangChain, LangGraph, Mastra, OpenAI Agents, Strands Agents, TanStack AI, the Vercel AI SDK, Vercel Eve, and Microsoft Agent Framework for Go.

Arcjet policies are managed centrally, written in Rego or with a builder, and published from the Arcjet Console or the Arcjet MCP server. Each rule runs in dry run before it goes live, and changes take effect in real time. You can also generate a policy from an English description.

Arcjet detectors include prompt injection, sensitive information, destination threat analysis, token budgets, and rate limits. The same SDK covers bot detection, Shield WAF, rate limiting, and email validation for web applications.

Hooks have limits that the agent vendors set. Claude Code and Copilot HTTP hooks fail open by vendor design, and Cursor and Codex use a fail-closed command wrapper. Personal accounts don't load organization hooks, so you block those at the network or device. For details, see why coding agent hooks fail open.

Key differences between Arcjet and Zenity

Arcjet differs from Zenity in four ways: enforcement inside the agents you code, the coding-agent policy engine, coverage of SaaS and low-code agents, and how each product is bought. The following sections cover each one.

Enforcement inside your own agents

Zenity covers custom agents on AWS Bedrock, Azure AI Foundry, and Google Vertex AI, and its August 2026 update connects agents that emit OpenTelemetry spans without a dedicated connector. Zenity's public documentation doesn't describe how Runtime Boundaries blocks an action inside an agent that you host and code yourself.

Arcjet is built for that case. The Arcjet check is a function call in your tool handler, so the decision arrives before the side effect and your code acts on it. The check can use application context that only your code has, such as the user, the tenant, the plan, or the resource. For the design pattern, see AI agent security architecture.

Coding agents

Coding agents are the closest overlap, because Zenity and Arcjet both use the agents' own hooks. Zenity blocks at the PreToolUse hook and added a Boundaries CLI for version-controlled policy files in its August 2026 update.

Arcjet's coding-agent support is a policy engine: Rego policies with tests, dry run before live, 12 single-concern starter policies, and one policy across Claude Code, Copilot, Cursor, and Codex. Hook evaluation runs at the edge in over 300 data centers and typically adds a few tens of milliseconds. Latency matters here because Claude Code and Copilot fail open on a slow hook. For a walkthrough, see how to secure AI coding agents.

SaaS and low-code agents

Zenity is the stronger fit for SaaS and low-code agents. Zenity documents integrations for Copilot Studio, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Agentforce, ChatGPT Enterprise, and Power Platform, plus posture and exposure management across them. Arcjet doesn't enforce inside closed SaaS agents, because you don't control their code or hooks.

Buying and deployment

Zenity sells to enterprises through demos and private offers. Arcjet has self-serve plans (Individual at $25 per month, Startup at $299 per month) and custom Enterprise pricing, with usage at $50 per million agent requests. You can sign up and publish a policy in dry run without a sales call. For more information, see Arcjet pricing.

When to choose Zenity

Choose Zenity when business users build your agents in SaaS and low-code platforms. Zenity fits when any of the following apply:

• Most of your agents are built in Copilot Studio, Power Platform, Agentforce, or ChatGPT Enterprise.
• You need an inventory and posture assessment of agents that business users build, across more than one SaaS platform.
• You want agentic identity and exposure management alongside detection, sold as one enterprise platform.

When to choose Arcjet

Choose Arcjet when engineers build your agents in code or you need one policy on your developers' coding agents. Arcjet fits when any of the following apply:

• You build agents in code and want the check to run inside the tool handler, with your application's context.
• You want one policy on Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Codex, installed through managed settings.
• You want to score the destinations an agent is about to contact with threat intelligence.
• You want Rego policies with tests and dry run, published from the Arcjet Console, CLI, or MCP server.
• You also need bot detection, rate limiting, and a WAF for the web application that hosts the agent.
• You want self-serve pricing and a free plan.

Can you use Zenity and Arcjet together?

Yes, Zenity and Arcjet can divide the work by who builds the agent. Zenity can cover the Copilot Studio and Agentforce agents that business teams build, and Arcjet can enforce inside the agents your engineers write and on their coding agents. If you use both on coding agents, give each hook a distinct job so that two policies don't disagree on the same tool call. Arcjet exports decisions to Datadog, Splunk, SentinelOne, Panther, and Amazon S3 on the Enterprise plan, so both products' findings can meet in your SIEM.

What are the alternatives to Zenity?

Zenity alternatives include platform-native agent security, broad AI security platforms, and runtime enforcement in code. The following products are common alternatives to Zenity, depending on which control you need:

• Arcjet provides runtime enforcement in your code and in the hooks of Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Codex, with self-serve pricing.
• Microsoft Agent 365 provides agent security through Entra, Purview, and Defender for organizations that run on Microsoft.
• Palo Alto Networks Prisma AIRS is a broad AI security platform with runtime scanning, an AI gateway, model security, and red teaming.
• Prompt Security from SentinelOne provides employee AI usage controls, code assistant redaction, and an MCP gateway.

For a broader shortlist, see AI agent security platforms and AI security posture management versus runtime security.