garak vs vectra
Side-by-side comparison to help you choose.
| Feature | garak | vectra |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Repository | Repository |
| UnfragileRank | 25/100 | 38/100 |
| Adoption | 0 | 0 |
| Quality | 0 | 0 |
| Ecosystem | 0 |
| 1 |
| Match Graph | 0 | 0 |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| Capabilities | 11 decomposed | 12 decomposed |
| Times Matched | 0 | 0 |
Garak scans LLMs for vulnerabilities by routing prompts through a modular harness system that abstracts different model providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, vLLM, etc.) behind a unified interface. Each harness handles authentication, rate limiting, and response parsing for its target model, allowing the same vulnerability test suite to run against any LLM without code changes. The architecture uses a plugin-based loader pattern to dynamically instantiate harnesses at runtime based on configuration.
Unique: Uses a harness abstraction layer that decouples vulnerability tests from model provider implementations, enabling the same test suite to run against OpenAI, Anthropic, open-source models, and custom endpoints without modification. Most competitors either target specific providers or require test rewrites per model.
vs alternatives: Garak's harness-based design allows security teams to test heterogeneous LLM deployments with a single tool, whereas alternatives like Promptfoo focus on prompt evaluation and Rebuff targets specific attack patterns.
Garak organizes vulnerability tests as 'probes' — modular test units that generate adversarial prompts, send them to a target LLM via a harness, and evaluate responses against detection criteria. Probes are organized into taxonomies (e.g., 'jailbreak', 'prompt-injection', 'hallucination') and can be composed into test suites. Each probe implements a generate() method that produces test prompts (often using templates or programmatic construction) and a detect() method that classifies model responses as vulnerable or safe based on heuristics, keyword matching, or semantic similarity.
Unique: Implements a two-stage probe architecture (generate + detect) that separates test prompt creation from response evaluation, allowing probes to be reused across different detection strategies and enabling custom detection logic without modifying prompt generation. This is more flexible than monolithic test frameworks that couple prompt and evaluation logic.
vs alternatives: Garak's probe taxonomy provides broader coverage of LLM vulnerabilities (jailbreaks, prompt injection, hallucination, bias) compared to narrower tools like Rebuff (jailbreak-focused) or Promptfoo (prompt optimization-focused).
Garak exposes both a command-line interface (CLI) and a Python API for executing vulnerability scans. The CLI uses argparse to parse configuration and invoke the orchestrator, making garak accessible to non-programmers. The Python API provides classes and functions for programmatic test execution, enabling integration into Python-based workflows, notebooks, and CI/CD pipelines. Both interfaces share the same underlying orchestrator, ensuring consistent behavior. The architecture uses a facade pattern to abstract CLI and API differences, allowing users to choose the interface that best fits their workflow.
Unique: Provides both CLI and Python API interfaces backed by the same orchestrator, allowing users to choose the interface that best fits their workflow (command-line for one-off scans, Python API for automation). The facade pattern ensures consistent behavior across interfaces.
vs alternatives: Garak's dual interface (CLI + API) is more flexible than CLI-only tools (like some security scanners) or API-only tools (like some Python libraries), enabling broader adoption across different user types and workflows.
Garak provides a configuration-driven orchestration layer that chains together harnesses, probes, and detectors into executable test suites. Users define test runs in YAML/JSON config files specifying which models to test, which probes to run, and how to aggregate results. The orchestrator handles sequential or parallel probe execution (depending on harness concurrency support), collects results, and generates structured reports (JSON, CSV, HTML) with vulnerability metrics, model comparisons, and risk summaries. The architecture uses a run manager pattern to track test state and enable resumable/incremental scanning.
Unique: Uses a declarative YAML/JSON configuration model to define test suites, allowing non-programmers to compose complex multi-model security tests without writing code. The run manager pattern enables resumable scans and incremental result collection, reducing cost and time for large-scale audits.
vs alternatives: Garak's configuration-driven orchestration is more flexible than CLI-only tools and provides better auditability than programmatic test frameworks, making it suitable for compliance-heavy environments.
Garak's probes generate adversarial prompts using multiple strategies: template-based (filling placeholders in predefined jailbreak/injection patterns), programmatic (constructing prompts via Python logic to vary parameters), and potentially LLM-based (using auxiliary models to generate novel attack prompts). Probes can combine strategies — e.g., a jailbreak probe might use templates for known attacks and programmatic generation for variations. The generation layer abstracts prompt construction, allowing probes to focus on detection logic and enabling reuse of generation strategies across multiple probes.
Unique: Separates prompt generation from detection, allowing probes to use multiple generation strategies (templates, programmatic, LLM-based) and enabling reuse of generation logic across different detection criteria. This modularity makes it easier to add new attack patterns without duplicating generation code.
vs alternatives: Garak's multi-strategy generation approach is more comprehensive than single-strategy tools; it supports both curated jailbreak templates and programmatic variation, whereas competitors often use only one approach.
Garak's detection layer evaluates LLM responses against multiple criteria to classify them as vulnerable or safe. Detection strategies include keyword/regex matching (e.g., detecting refusal phrases or harmful content keywords), semantic similarity (comparing responses to known vulnerable outputs using embeddings), classifier-based detection (using auxiliary ML models to score response safety), and custom heuristics. Probes compose these strategies — e.g., a jailbreak probe might use keyword matching for obvious bypasses and semantic similarity for subtle ones. The detection layer is decoupled from prompt generation, allowing the same response to be evaluated by multiple detectors.
Unique: Implements a composable detection architecture where multiple detection strategies (keyword, semantic, classifier) can be combined per probe, allowing fine-grained control over false positive/negative tradeoffs. Most competitors use single detection strategies, making them less flexible for diverse vulnerability types.
vs alternatives: Garak's multi-strategy detection is more robust than keyword-only tools (like simple regex scanners) and more flexible than single-model approaches (like classifier-only tools), enabling better accuracy across diverse attack types.
Garak organizes vulnerabilities into a hierarchical taxonomy (e.g., 'jailbreak', 'prompt-injection', 'hallucination', 'bias', 'privacy') with subtypes and specific probes for each category. The taxonomy is exposed as a discoverable API — users can list available probes, filter by vulnerability type, and understand the coverage of each category. The taxonomy structure enables organized reporting (grouping results by vulnerability class) and helps users understand which attack vectors are tested. The architecture uses a registry pattern to dynamically load probes and organize them by taxonomy.
Unique: Provides a discoverable, hierarchical taxonomy of LLM vulnerabilities with explicit probe mappings, allowing users to understand test coverage and plan audits systematically. Most competitors lack explicit taxonomy organization, making it harder to assess what vulnerabilities are tested.
vs alternatives: Garak's taxonomy-based organization makes it easier for non-security experts to understand vulnerability scope and plan comprehensive audits, whereas competitors often require deep knowledge of attack types.
Garak supports scanning multiple LLMs in a single test run, aggregating results across models to enable comparative analysis. The orchestrator manages harness instances for each model, routes probes to all harnesses, and collects results in a unified format. Aggregation includes per-model vulnerability counts, cross-model comparisons (e.g., 'Model A is vulnerable to X, Model B is not'), and overall risk rankings. The architecture uses a result collector pattern to normalize outputs from different harnesses and enable flexible aggregation strategies.
Unique: Normalizes results across heterogeneous LLM providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, open-source, custom) into a unified format, enabling direct comparative analysis without manual result reconciliation. The result collector pattern abstracts provider-specific output formats, making it easy to add new models.
vs alternatives: Garak's multi-model aggregation is more comprehensive than single-model tools and more flexible than provider-specific benchmarks, enabling fair comparisons across diverse LLM ecosystems.
+3 more capabilities
Stores vector embeddings and metadata in JSON files on disk while maintaining an in-memory index for fast similarity search. Uses a hybrid architecture where the file system serves as the persistent store and RAM holds the active search index, enabling both durability and performance without requiring a separate database server. Supports automatic index persistence and reload cycles.
Unique: Combines file-backed persistence with in-memory indexing, avoiding the complexity of running a separate database service while maintaining reasonable performance for small-to-medium datasets. Uses JSON serialization for human-readable storage and easy debugging.
vs alternatives: Lighter weight than Pinecone or Weaviate for local development, but trades scalability and concurrent access for simplicity and zero infrastructure overhead.
Implements vector similarity search using cosine distance calculation on normalized embeddings, with support for alternative distance metrics. Performs brute-force similarity computation across all indexed vectors, returning results ranked by distance score. Includes configurable thresholds to filter results below a minimum similarity threshold.
Unique: Implements pure cosine similarity without approximation layers, making it deterministic and debuggable but trading performance for correctness. Suitable for datasets where exact results matter more than speed.
vs alternatives: More transparent and easier to debug than approximate methods like HNSW, but significantly slower for large-scale retrieval compared to Pinecone or Milvus.
Accepts vectors of configurable dimensionality and automatically normalizes them for cosine similarity computation. Validates that all vectors have consistent dimensions and rejects mismatched vectors. Supports both pre-normalized and unnormalized input, with automatic L2 normalization applied during insertion.
vectra scores higher at 38/100 vs garak at 25/100.
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Unique: Automatically normalizes vectors during insertion, eliminating the need for users to handle normalization manually. Validates dimensionality consistency.
vs alternatives: More user-friendly than requiring manual normalization, but adds latency compared to accepting pre-normalized vectors.
Exports the entire vector database (embeddings, metadata, index) to standard formats (JSON, CSV) for backup, analysis, or migration. Imports vectors from external sources in multiple formats. Supports format conversion between JSON, CSV, and other serialization formats without losing data.
Unique: Supports multiple export/import formats (JSON, CSV) with automatic format detection, enabling interoperability with other tools and databases. No proprietary format lock-in.
vs alternatives: More portable than database-specific export formats, but less efficient than binary dumps. Suitable for small-to-medium datasets.
Implements BM25 (Okapi BM25) lexical search algorithm for keyword-based retrieval, then combines BM25 scores with vector similarity scores using configurable weighting to produce hybrid rankings. Tokenizes text fields during indexing and performs term frequency analysis at query time. Allows tuning the balance between semantic and lexical relevance.
Unique: Combines BM25 and vector similarity in a single ranking framework with configurable weighting, avoiding the need for separate lexical and semantic search pipelines. Implements BM25 from scratch rather than wrapping an external library.
vs alternatives: Simpler than Elasticsearch for hybrid search but lacks advanced features like phrase queries, stemming, and distributed indexing. Better integrated with vector search than bolting BM25 onto a pure vector database.
Supports filtering search results using a Pinecone-compatible query syntax that allows boolean combinations of metadata predicates (equality, comparison, range, set membership). Evaluates filter expressions against metadata objects during search, returning only vectors that satisfy the filter constraints. Supports nested metadata structures and multiple filter operators.
Unique: Implements Pinecone's filter syntax natively without requiring a separate query language parser, enabling drop-in compatibility for applications already using Pinecone. Filters are evaluated in-memory against metadata objects.
vs alternatives: More compatible with Pinecone workflows than generic vector databases, but lacks the performance optimizations of Pinecone's server-side filtering and index-accelerated predicates.
Integrates with multiple embedding providers (OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, local transformer models via Transformers.js) to generate vector embeddings from text. Abstracts provider differences behind a unified interface, allowing users to swap providers without changing application code. Handles API authentication, rate limiting, and batch processing for efficiency.
Unique: Provides a unified embedding interface supporting both cloud APIs and local transformer models, allowing users to choose between cost/privacy trade-offs without code changes. Uses Transformers.js for browser-compatible local embeddings.
vs alternatives: More flexible than single-provider solutions like LangChain's OpenAI embeddings, but less comprehensive than full embedding orchestration platforms. Local embedding support is unique for a lightweight vector database.
Runs entirely in the browser using IndexedDB for persistent storage, enabling client-side vector search without a backend server. Synchronizes in-memory index with IndexedDB on updates, allowing offline search and reducing server load. Supports the same API as the Node.js version for code reuse across environments.
Unique: Provides a unified API across Node.js and browser environments using IndexedDB for persistence, enabling code sharing and offline-first architectures. Avoids the complexity of syncing client-side and server-side indices.
vs alternatives: Simpler than building separate client and server vector search implementations, but limited by browser storage quotas and IndexedDB performance compared to server-side databases.
+4 more capabilities