Protecto vs Skyflow for LLM Data Protection: 2026 Comparison

Protecto and Skyflow are both data protection platforms that keep names, account numbers, clinical notes, and credentials out of what your AI systems see. Protecto here is the AI data security company at protecto.ai, not Protegrity.

Protecto is best for teams that want masking and unmasking inside AI pipelines, with published plans from $250 a month, while Skyflow is best for enterprises that need a governed data privacy vault with runtime control for AI agents. This guide compares Protecto and Skyflow on architecture, features, pricing, compliance, and reviews, with NoPII, Enigma Vault’s LLM privacy proxy, alongside as a free-to-start third option.

Protecto vs Skyflow at a Glance

Figures are as of 8 November 2026, from each vendor’s own site, docs, and terms and from G2. For more options, see our guides to Protecto alternatives and Skyflow alternatives.

Protecto vs Skyflow: Quick Verdict

Protecto: An AI-focused masking platform with a headless REST API for mask and unmask calls, a privacy gateway for chat tools, a LiteLLM adapter, and deployment as multi-tenant SaaS or on-premises, including air-gapped. Plans run $250 to $750 a month, billed per API call, with Enterprise by quote. We found no independent user reviews.

Skyflow: An API-first data privacy vault with Detect for de-identification across 60 entity types and more than 40 languages, policy-based re-identification, and deployment as SaaS, a dedicated VPC, or in your own cloud account. It publishes no prices and offers a free Try Account for test data.

Protecto is the better fit if:

• Masking must run inside your own network or air-gapped, and you will operate it yourself.
• You want a published monthly price tied to API-call volume.
• You will call a masking API at each data boundary in your pipeline, and you can wait for features its docs still label coming soon.

Skyflow is the better fit if:

• You need one governed vault for PII, PHI, and payment data as well as AI, with different views for different roles.
• Card storage and PCI DSS Level 1 are part of the need. Protecto’s own page says Skyflow fits in that case.
• You want a dedicated VPC or your own cloud account, customer-managed keys, and you have an enterprise buying process.

NoPII is the better fit if:

• You want to protect your own application’s LLM calls with a base-URL change and no code at each boundary.
• You want a published price and a free tier that does not expire, so you can prove it on real traffic first.
• You can live without on-premises below Enterprise, agent and MCP coverage, and file or image handling.

Where this leaves you: Protecto masks data for AI and can run inside your walls, Skyflow governs data across systems and agents, and NoPII protects your application’s LLM calls with a base-URL change and a price you can read.

How Protecto, Skyflow, and NoPII Differ at the Core

Protecto exposes mask and unmask calls that your code makes at each data boundary, Skyflow keeps data in a governed vault that you query and re-identify by policy, and NoPII sits in the path of your LLM requests and does the swap for you.

To make it concrete, follow one support message on its way to an LLM.

Protecto’s Model: Its vault is a headless API, so you decide where in your pipeline to mask and where to unmask, and you build your own identity integration around it. That gives you control and costs you code at each boundary.

Skyflow’s Model: One governed record, many views. Detect de-identifies text and files, and policy decides who gets real values back.

Protecto vs Skyflow Pricing

What Protecto Charges

Protecto publishes SaaS plans, billed per API call each month. A call can carry an array of values of up to 600 characters each, and the page does not define a call further. Overage rates are not published, and the page says there are no hidden fees. Async masking and Data Scanning need a paid plan and are not on the trial.

Per 1,000 calls, Starter costs $50, Growth about $41.67, and Scale about $46.88. On-premises, VPC, and air-gapped deployments are quote only.

What Skyflow Charges

Skyflow publishes no plans or prices, and its pricing URL simply shows the homepage. Quotes come through a demo or an AWS Marketplace private offer. Its Terms of Service, updated 15 July 2026, base fees on a count of “Unique Identifiers,” invoiced annually in advance, with a 5% increase at renewal and true-up charges for excess use. A free Try Account exists for test data only.

What NoPII Charges

Protecto vs Skyflow Cost at Four Stages

How to Read This Table: A Protecto call can carry many values, a NoPII token is far smaller than a call, and Skyflow counts identifiers, so the rows show stage, not equivalent volume. The fair test is to send the same traffic through each and compare the bill.

The Practical Takeaway: A year of Protecto Starter is $3,000 and Growth is $6,000. A year of NoPII Starter is $550 and Growth is $2,700, and Lite is free. Protecto’s on-premises option has no NoPII equivalent below Enterprise, so if network control is the requirement, price that first. See our list of the best PII tokenization software for LLMs for more options.

Protecto vs Skyflow Features Compared

Compare Protecto and Skyflow on how they protect LLM data, what they detect, where they run, and how they govern reveals. Protecto is narrower and more portable, Skyflow is broader and more governed, and both leave several newer features undocumented.

Here is how the biggest differences play out in practice.

Where Protecto and Skyflow Differ in Practice

How Each Protects LLM Data

Protecto masks with typed, context-preserving tokens, with format-preserving and entropy-based options, and returns real values only through explicit, permissioned unmask calls. A gateway for chat tools maps Active Directory or Okta groups to a per-user key. Skyflow’s Detect de-identifies text, files, audio, and images, offers vault tokens, entity counters, and entity-only tokens, and re-identifies by role.

Detection Coverage and Accuracy Claims

Protecto’s current product pages say 50+ built-in entity types plus custom entities, and its docs list 53. An older page still says 200+. It reports a 99.74% F1 score on an April 2026 internal test of 75 cases, and 99% recall and 96% precision in a four-week proof of concept at Bank Muscat. Those are vendor-reported figures. The benchmark it cites, hosted on its own site, compares it with AWS Comprehend and Microsoft Presidio, not Skyflow.

Skyflow documents 60 entity types and more than 40 languages and makes no accuracy claims. No independent head-to-head exists, so run both on your own data.

Deployment: Your Network or Theirs

Protecto offers multi-tenant SaaS and an on-premises or private-cloud model on AWS, GCP, Azure, or your own data center, with air-gapped listed as a use. In that model you own scaling, monitoring, backups, upgrades, and availability, setup takes days to weeks, and the trial is SaaS only.

Skyflow offers multi-tenant SaaS, Virtual Private Skyflow in a dedicated VPC, and BYOC on AWS or GCP, where Skyflow operates the service in your account. We found no customer-operated on-premises option in its docs. NoPII is a managed service, and its self-hosted edition runs under an annual Enterprise license with no token meter.

Policy, Governance, and What Is Still on the Roadmap

Protecto’s docs list context-based access control, GPTGuard MCP, and Dynamic Auth as coming soon or in preview, while its marketing pages present context-based access control as available. Ask what is generally available today. Skyflow combines roles, row-level rules, and context-aware authorization, and supports customer-managed keys.

Agents, RAG, and MCP

Protecto describes a Secure RAG capability, a gateway that resolves tagged values at the tool boundary, and MCP features that its docs label preview. Skyflow announced MCP data protection in August 2025, but its agent-memory and agentic-commerce pages have no documentation behind them that we could find. NoPII does not cover agent traffic, but anything your app puts in a request, including retrieved context, passes through the proxy.

Cards and Payments

Protecto detects card numbers in text but lists no card vault and no PCI DSS certification. Its own comparison page says Skyflow fits when card storage and PCI DSS Level 1 are the main requirement. Skyflow holds PCI DSS Level 1. NoPII detects cards in prompts, and storing cards is a separate job for Enigma Vault’s Card Vault.

Protecto vs Skyflow Security and Compliance

Skyflow holds PCI DSS Level 1, SOC 2 Type II, and ISO 27001:2022. Protecto states SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and HIPAA on its pages, but we found no report, certificate, or trust center. NoPII runs on Enigma Vault’s platform, which is PCI DSS Level 1 and SOC 2 Type II.

Protecto’s docs describe its SaaS controls as SOC 2 aligned, so ask for the report itself. Whichever you choose, ask for the audit documents under NDA before you send production data.

Protecto vs Skyflow Reviews

Independent reviews are thin for all three. Skyflow has two on G2, spread across its product listings, and NoPII has one. We found no reviews of Protecto on G2, Capterra, or SourceForge.

What Protecto’s Proof Shows

Protecto’s proof is vendor-published: testimonials from Automation Anywhere and Inovalon, and case studies including Bank Muscat. The accuracy figures in them are Protecto’s own. Ask for a reference customer in your industry.

What Skyflow’s Proof Shows

Skyflow’s G2 reviews are positive but few: one on the Payments Data Privacy Vault praises how it keeps payment details confidential, and one on the Healthcare Data Privacy Vault values its HIPAA alignment but notes occasional slowness. Customer quotes on Skyflow’s own site are chosen by Skyflow.

What NoPII’s Proof Shows

What Protecto’s Comparison Page Says About Skyflow

Protecto republished its Skyflow comparison on 5 November 2026 and says it reviewed Skyflow’s details that month. Several claims are worth checking.

• Skyflow has basic detection. Skyflow’s docs describe Detect with 60 entity types, more than 40 languages, regex custom entities, and file formats including PDF, audio, and images. No head-to-head test exists.
• Skyflow has no on-premises or air-gapped option. Skyflow’s docs list SaaS, a dedicated VPC, and BYOC, and do not mention on-premises, so that is consistent. But the docs list VPC and BYOC as standard models, not customizations as the page suggests.
• Protecto is much more affordable. The page gives no figure. Protecto’s entry price is $250 a month for 5,000 API calls, Skyflow publishes none, and the billing units differ, so no like-for-like comparison exists.
• An independent benchmark favors Protecto. The study is hosted on Protecto’s own site and did not test Skyflow.

The page also concedes that Skyflow fits better when card storage and PCI DSS Level 1 are the main need. Treat both as marketing, and let only the claims you can test in a proof of concept count.

Does Skyflow Compare Itself to Protecto?

No. Skyflow’s sitemap lists comparison pages against Protegrity, Shift, and Very Good Security, such as its Protegrity page and its VGS page, but none naming Protecto. That leaves Protecto’s own page as the only head-to-head between the two, so every claim above comes from one side. Ask each vendor to show the claims it makes about the other in a proof of concept.

Who Should Choose Protecto, Skyflow, or NoPII

An AI Product Team Calling an LLM API From One Application

A Regulated Team That Must Keep Processing Inside Its Own Network

Protecto’s on-premises and air-gapped model is built for this, and Skyflow offers a dedicated VPC or BYOC. NoPII’s self-hosted edition is available on Enterprise. In every case, ask who operates the service and what the audit evidence looks like.

An Enterprise Governing Data Across Many Systems and Agents

Skyflow fits best. Field-level policies, customer-managed keys, and Detect across text, files, and audio suit a company where many teams and tools touch sensitive data. Expect a demo, a quote, and an annual contract.

A Team Weighing Build Against Buy

If you are weighing open-source detection such as Microsoft Presidio, price the reversible tokens, audit trail, and access controls you would have to build around it. Protecto and Skyflow both sell that layer, and NoPII does too, with a free tier you can compare against your own prototype.

Questions to Ask Protecto and Skyflow Before You Sign

Bring these to both vendors. The answers shown are what each publishes today, so you can see where a sales call is needed.

The last row matters for all three. Tokens and mappings do not transfer between vendors on their own, so agree the exit process before you sign, whereas most buyers only ask when they are already leaving.

Moving From Protecto or Skyflow to NoPII

If the price or the deployment model no longer fits, the move is a change in where masking happens, so plan it before you cancel anything.

• List Where You Mask and Unmask: Find every place your code calls Protecto or Skyflow, and every system that stores a token or mapping.
• Check What You Rely On: If you use on-premises deployment, agent or MCP controls, file and image handling, or task-level policy, confirm NoPII covers it or that you can live without it.
• Route One Provider First: Point one model client at the NoPII base URL and compare what reaches the provider.
• Run Both for a Few Weeks: Then cut over.

If you want help mapping your AI data path, book a migration call, or read our guide to LLM privacy proxies.

Final Verdict: Protecto, Skyflow, or NoPII?

Protecto and Skyflow solve overlapping problems from different directions. Protecto is the stronger choice when masking must run inside your own network and you want a published monthly price. Skyflow is the stronger choice when you need a governed vault across many systems, with card storage and PCI DSS Level 1 in scope. I’d decide on where the data must be processed first and the price second, and I’d ask each vendor which of its AI features are generally available today.

If what you need is to keep PII out of your application’s LLM calls, NoPII does that with a base-URL change, a price you can read, and a free tier that does not expire. It does not cover agent traffic, files, or on-premises below Enterprise, so if your project depends on those, it is not the right choice.

More comparisons: Enigma Vault vs Skyflow, Skyflow vs VGS, Basis Theory vs Skyflow, and the best AI data security software for enterprises.

How We Researched This Comparison

We checked every fact on 8 November 2026. Protecto facts come from protecto.ai, docs.protecto.ai, its help center, its support SLA, and its published comparison page. Skyflow facts come from skyflow.com, its documentation, its Terms of Service (updated 15 July 2026), and its security page. G2 listings come from G2, and NoPII facts come from our own pricing and product pages.

Where a vendor makes a claim about itself or a rival, such as accuracy or cost, we label it as a vendor claim. If something here is out of date, tell us through our contact page and we will check it.