HOL Guard vs NeMo Guardrails
HOL Guard leads on trust: 92.2/100 (Grade A) against 71.9/100 (Grade B), a 20.3-point gap. HOL Guard leads on supply-chain integrity and provenance; NeMo Guardrails leads on adoption and rests on broader evidence. Note: HOL Guard's evidence coverage is thinner (coverage B vs A) — its score rests on fewer independent signal types.
Open-source antivirus for AI agents: block risky tools, secret access, prompt injection, malicious packages, MCP servers, plugins, and skills at runtime.
Choose HOL Guard if supply-chain integrity and provenance matter most.
- +10.5Safety / Integrity: OSSF Scorecard 9.6 against 7.1
- +7.2Identity / Provenance: package provenance attested, against none
- +3.2Maintenance: last push today, against 1d ago
- +2.2Transparency: OSSF Scorecard 9.6 against 7.1
NeMo Guardrails is an open-source toolkit for easily adding programmable guardrails to LLM-based conversational systems.
Choose NeMo Guardrails if adoption matters most.
- +3.8Adoption: 93.6k weekly downloads against 9.1k
- A vs BEvidence coverage: 4 of 5 independent signal types, against 3
Where they differ
An independent, evidence-based trust comparison of HOL Guard and NeMo Guardrails, two Security & Guardrails projects in the HVTracker registry. Scores come from public, checkable signals — supply-chain provenance, OSSF Scorecard, maintenance, and adoption — not popularity.
Full evidence
| Signal | HOL Guardhashgraph-online/hol-guard | NeMo GuardrailsNVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails |
|---|---|---|
| HVTrust score | 92.2 | 71.9 |
| Evidence grade | A | B |
| Coverage grade | B | A |
| Overall rank | #7 | #293 |
| Rank in Security & Guardrails | #1 | #5 |
| GitHub stars | 683 | 7.2k |
| Last updated | today | 1d ago |
| Build provenance | Yes | No |
| OSSF Scorecard | 9.6 / 10 | 7.1 / 10 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | NOASSERTION |
| Downloads | 9k/wk | 94k/wk |
| Trust dimensions (points earned) | ||
| Safety / integrity / 25 | 24.4 | 13.9 |
| Identity & provenance / 18 | 18.0 | 10.8 |
| Transparency / 17 | 16.7 | 14.5 |
| Maintenance / 20 | 20.0 | 16.8 |
| Adoption / 20 | 12.1 | 15.9 |
| Runtime capability surface (full matrix) | ||
| MCP server | Implemented | — |
| External providers | 3 — Anthropic, Google Gemini, Multi-provider (LiteLLM) | 1 — OpenAI |
| Requires API keys | No | No |
| Plugin surface | extensions | — |
| Provenance drift | Match | Unknown |
How to read this: HVTrust (0–100) weighs supply-chain signals (provenance, OSSF Scorecard, signed commits, open license) alongside real-world adoption, scaled by an evidence-confidence factor. Grade bands: A ≥ 80, B ≥ 65, C ≥ 50, D < 50. Signals refresh daily. Full methodology v4.4 →