OpenAI Moderation is one provider.
OpenModeration is the platform.
OpenAI's Moderation API gives you toxicity scores. OpenModeration gives you a complete Trust & Safety operation — 10 providers through one API, pre-filtering, automated rules, human review, and DSA-compliant audit trails. Open source. Self-hostable. No lock-in.
Why teams switch from OpenAI Moderation
OpenAI's API is a great moderation engine. But an engine needs a car.
You're locked into one provider's accuracy
OpenAI Moderation is excellent for English content, but it's suboptimal for non-English languages, niche categories, or when you need redundancy. With OpenModeration, you route to the best provider per request — OpenAI for English toxicity, Mistral for multilingual spam, LLMs for custom categories.
An API call is not a moderation workflow
Getting a toxicity score back from OpenAI is just the start. You still need to: decide what score triggers what action, build a review UI for grey-area cases, log every decision for audits, manage your team's access. OpenModeration ships all of this out of the box.
Costs add up without pre-filtering
Every call to the OpenAI Moderation API costs money — even for obvious spam or forbidden words. OpenModeration's pre-filter blocks these before they reach any provider, potentially saving 10-30% on API costs.
DSA compliance requires more than an API
The EU Digital Services Act requires documented moderation decisions, appeal mechanisms, and transparency reports. A raw API response is not enough. OpenModeration provides the full compliance layer: audit logs, review trails, and exportable reports.
Same text moderation, more control
With OpenAI's API, you get scores. With OpenModeration, you get scores plus pre-filtering, configurable thresholds, automated actions, and a complete audit trail — all through the same single API call.
Keep using OpenAI as a provider through OpenModeration with your own API keys (BYOK).
Add redundancy by routing to Mistral, Azure, or HuggingFace when OpenAI is slow or down.
Compare providers objectively with unified analytics across all your moderation traffic.
# OpenAI Moderation API (direct)
const openai = new OpenAI({ apiKey: 'sk-...' });
const mod = await openai.moderations.create({ input: text });
// Result: OpenAI-specific format, 11 categories, no thresholds
# OpenModeration (unified)
const result = await fetch('https://api.openmoderation.com/v1/moderation', {
method: 'POST',
headers: { 'Authorization': 'Bearer om_key_...' },
body: JSON.stringify({
input: text,
categories: ['hate', 'harassment', 'sexual', 'violence', 'self-harm', 'spam'],
threshold: 0.5
})
});
// Plus: pre-filter, double threshold, auto-actions, audit trail, team dashboardOpenAI Moderation API vs OpenModeration
Head-to-head across the features that matter for production moderation.
| Feature | OpenAI Moderation API | OpenModeration |
|---|---|---|
| Providers | OpenAI only (single provider) | 10 providers: OpenAI, Azure, Mistral, HuggingFace, LLMs (GPT-4o, Claude), Cohere, and more |
| API format | Proprietary OpenAI format | Standardized format across all providers. Switch providers with zero code changes. |
| Pre-filtering | Not available — every request hits the API | Built-in word filter blocks obvious content before any API call, saving costs |
| Decision logic | Binary flagged/not flagged per category | Dual threshold: auto-approve / grey zone → human review / auto-reject |
| Moderation Console | API only. No dashboard, no review UI. | Full dashboard: moderation queue, team roles, analytics, provider health |
| Automated rules | Must build your own integration | Out-of-the-box: define rules once, the Action Engine enforces them automatically |
| Human review | Must build your own review UI | Built-in review queue with context, assignation, approve/reject |
| Audit trail | Limited to API logs | Full audit trail: every AI and human decision logged, exportable for DSA |
| Vendor lock-in | Full lock-in to OpenAI ecosystem | Zero. BYOK, self-hostable, AGPL v3 open source |
| Data sovereignty | Data processed on OpenAI servers | Self-host on your infrastructure. EU cloud option available. |
| Pricing | $0.0001/1K tokens (pay-per-use) | Free self-hosted. Managed cloud from €99/mo (100K req included). |
| Max input length | 32,000 characters | Up to 32,000 chars (provider-dependent) + batch processing for larger volumes |
Using OpenAI Moderation API alone
- ✕ Pay for every API call — even obvious spam or forbidden words
- ✕ Binary flagged/not flagged — no grey zone for nuanced content
- ✕ Build your own dashboard for human moderators to review edge cases
- ✕ Build your own rule engine to translate scores into actions
- ✕ Build your own audit logging system for DSA compliance
- ✕ No fallback if OpenAI is slow or unavailable
- ✕ Vendor lock-in to OpenAI ecosystem
OpenModeration (with OpenAI as a provider)
- ✓ Pre-filter: Block obvious spam and forbidden words before any API call — save 10-30% on costs
- ✓ Double threshold: Auto-approve, auto-reject, or route to human review based on configurable thresholds
- ✓ Ready-to-use Dashboard: Your Trust & Safety team can start reviewing content immediately
- ✓ Simple rule configuration: Three tools — forbidden words, category thresholds, and your community charter. No code needed.
- ✓ Built-in Compliance: Full audit trail, exportable reports, configurable data retention
- ✓ Multi-Provider Fallback: If OpenAI is slow, seamlessly route to Mistral, Azure, or HuggingFace
- ✓ Zero lock-in: Open source (AGPL v3), self-hostable, BYOK. Your data, your rules.
Built for every content moderation use case
Whether you're replacing OpenAI's API or augmenting it, OpenModeration fits your stack.
Social Platforms
Moderate user comments and posts with context-aware AI and community-specific policies.
AI Applications
Filter both user inputs and LLM outputs. Use LLM-based moderation for custom, evolving categories.
Gaming
Real-time chat moderation across multiple languages with sub-250ms latency and automated actions.
Marketplaces
Flag spam listings, hate speech in reviews, and PII leaks before they go live.
Compare other providers
Ready to go beyond a single moderation API?
Get 10 providers, pre-filtering, automated rules, and a human review dashboard — all open source. Keep using OpenAI with BYOK, or add more providers.