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NeuralTrust TrustGate and TrueFoundry are both MCP gateways with an AI gateway on the same platform, both connect agents to MCP servers through a governed catalog, and both deploy in private or cloud environments. TrueFoundry's MCP gateway is one layer of a broad, Kubernetes-native AI platform that also spans model serving, an AI gateway, an agent gateway, and prompt management. For a team that wants a single platform to run the whole AI stack, that breadth is the pitch, and TrueFoundry delivers it with RBAC, federated identity, and observability across the board.
The difference is what the gateway was built to be. TrueFoundry is a broad AI platform, and its security and identity are assembled from platform features: guardrails run as configurable hooks that can call external moderation and PII services, identity runs through RBAC and an external identity provider, and audit is request logging. TrustGate was built as a security-first gateway, so security is first-party and native: a detection engine that reasons across a whole session, organization-level identity governance, and an open-source core the enterprise can run and audit. Both cover the AI stack. Only one secures the tool call as its reason for existing.
TL;DR
- NeuralTrust has a built-in, first-party runtime security engine; TrueFoundry assembles security from platform features. TrueFoundry's guardrails are configurable hooks that call external moderation and PII services. TrustGate's Security Engine is native to the gateway and inspects each call inline.
- NeuralTrust reasons across a whole session; TrueFoundry evaluates each request in isolation. TrustGate carries multi-turn behavioral detection. TrueFoundry documents no multi-turn behavioral engine, so a per-request guardrail sees one call at a time.
- NeuralTrust is open source; TrueFoundry's gateway is proprietary. TrustGate's core is Apache 2.0 and free to self-host and audit. TrueFoundry's gateway has no open codebase to read or run independently of a commercial relationship.
- Both run an AI gateway and both deploy in private or cloud environments, so those are ties. The decision is security depth, identity governance, and whether the gateway is open.
Comparison at a Glance
| Capability | NeuralTrust | TrueFoundry |
|---|---|---|
| AI/LLM gateway on the same platform | ✅ | ✅ |
| Flexible deployment (private, cloud) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Built-in first-party runtime security engine | ✅ | ❌ |
| Multi-turn / behavioral runtime detection | ✅ | ❌ |
| Open source | ✅ | ❌ |
| Organization-level identity governance | ✅ | ❌ |
Platform Overview
What is NeuralTrust TrustGate?
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TrustGate is NeuralTrust's gateway. As an MCP gateway it sits between agents and the MCP servers they call and becomes the single place where tool discovery, identity, policy, security, and observability attach. Teams connect MCP servers from an integrated catalog of more than 200, expose a curated set of tools behind one endpoint, and govern every one of them through the gateway. It is the control layer a platform or architecture team can standardize the whole agent estate on, running in their own infrastructure rather than a vendor's.
Because NeuralTrust is a security company, security is first-party and native to the gateway rather than assembled from external services. A Security Engine attaches to every route, inspects each tool call inline, and reasons across a whole session with multi-turn behavioral detection. TrustGate adds organization-level identity governance and a cryptographic audit trail, runs an LLM gateway on the same platform, deploys in private or cloud environments, and is open source at its core under Apache 2.0, so a team can run, inspect, and operate it in production.
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What is TrueFoundry?
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TrueFoundry is a broad, Kubernetes-native enterprise AI platform whose MCP gateway is one layer alongside model serving, an AI gateway, an agent gateway, and prompt management. Its MCP gateway gives unified, discoverable access to MCP servers across cloud, on-prem, and hybrid from a central registry: teams register internal or third-party servers, auto-discover available tools with the right access control, and connect enterprise tools through prebuilt or custom MCP servers.
Its strengths are registry, discovery, and enterprise deployment. Access is governed with RBAC per server, OAuth 2.0 with dynamic discovery, and federated identity through Okta or Azure AD, and every request is traced and audited for observability. But the gateway's security and identity are assembled from platform features rather than built as a first-party security engine: guardrails run as configurable hooks that can call external moderation and PII services, identity runs through RBAC and an external identity provider, and audit is request logging and tracing. That breadth is the point of the product, and also the reason its security depth and identity governance fall short of a gateway built specifically to secure AI traffic. It is a broad AI platform, not a security-first gateway.
Built-In Runtime Security
TrustGate carries security inside the gateway as a first-party engine. A Security Engine attaches to every route, inspects each tool call and its response inline, and enforces an allow, block, or transform decision before the call reaches its target. Detection and enforcement are native to the gateway and built by a security company, not stitched together from external moderation or PII services, so protection is part of the product rather than a set of hooks a team has to wire up and maintain.
TrueFoundry's security is assembled from platform features. Its guardrails run as configurable hooks that can call external moderation and PII services, which means the gateway is orchestrating third-party checks rather than running its own detection engine on the traffic. That is flexible, but it puts the burden of choosing, integrating, and maintaining those external services on the customer, and the depth of protection is only as good as whatever is wired in behind the hooks. TrustGate ships the detection engine itself; TrueFoundry provides the hooks to call someone else's.
Multi-Turn Behavioral Detection
TrustGate's foundation is session context: it treats an interaction as a conversation, not a sequence of unrelated calls, so it can catch a pattern that only appears across turns, such as an attack or abuse deliberately spread across several innocuous-looking tool calls. Each call can look acceptable on its own while the sequence is not, and detection that only ever sees one call at a time will pass every one of them.
TrueFoundry's guardrails evaluate each request in isolation, and it documents no multi-turn behavioral engine. A per-request hook checks the call in front of it and moves on, with no reasoning that connects calls across a session to see a pattern forming. For catching abuse engineered to keep every single call under the threshold, that per-request model is exactly the blind spot session-level detection exists to close. TrustGate reasons across the whole conversation; TrueFoundry checks one request at a time.
Open Source vs Proprietary
Both platforms can be self-hosted, so the question is not whether the gateway runs in the customer's environment; it is what the customer is running. TrustGate's core is open source under Apache 2.0 and free to self-host. A team can run the gateway, route LLM and MCP traffic through it, read and audit the code, and operate it in production without a commercial relationship, which matters for teams that want to inspect the security-critical infrastructure they depend on and avoid lock-in at the gateway layer.
TrueFoundry's gateway is proprietary. It can be run as SaaS or self-hosted in a VPC, on-prem, or air-gapped environment, which keeps data in the customer's network, but there is no open codebase to read, audit, or run independently of a commercial relationship. For a control point that inspects every tool call, the ability to see and own the implementation is itself a security property, and it is one TrustGate offers that TrueFoundry does not.
Organization-Level Identity Governance
TrustGate governs organizational identity at the level of the domain. Through org domain verification, an organization proves ownership of its email domain, and membership is then governed automatically by that verified domain: who belongs to the organization, and therefore who is subject to its policies, is tied to a proven identity boundary rather than to manual invitations or external assumptions. This gives security and platform teams a reliable anchor for who is inside the organization before any model or tool access is granted.
TrueFoundry has no equivalent. Identity is handled through RBAC and an external identity provider, and the gateway trusts the claims that provider asserts; there is no concept of a verified organizational domain owned and governed within the gateway, and no automatic, domain-based membership governance. Organizational identity is consumed from elsewhere rather than established and enforced by the gateway itself, which leaves a gap exactly where enterprises want a firm answer to who belongs.
Final Verdict
TrueFoundry is a strong choice for a team that wants one Kubernetes-native platform spanning model serving, an AI gateway, an MCP gateway, and prompt management, with RBAC, federated identity, and observability across all of it. As a broad AI platform, it does that job well, and its MCP gateway inherits the platform's enterprise deployment and access controls. For an organization whose primary goal is consolidation on a single AI platform, it belongs on the shortlist.
NeuralTrust TrustGate wins the broader decision because it does what a security-first gateway does and still runs the AI stack around it. It matches TrueFoundry on the AI gateway and on flexible private-or-cloud deployment, and then adds what a platform assembled from features cannot: a first-party runtime security engine instead of hooks to external services, multi-turn behavioral detection instead of per-request checks, organization-level identity governance instead of trusting an external provider's claims, and an open-source core the enterprise can run and audit. TrueFoundry governs the AI stack broadly. TrustGate secures the tool call as its reason for existing, and is the one gateway a platform team can standardize the entire agent estate on.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the main difference between NeuralTrust and TrueFoundry?
TrueFoundry is a broad, Kubernetes-native AI platform whose MCP gateway is one layer among many, with security and identity assembled from platform features. NeuralTrust TrustGate is a security-first gateway with a first-party runtime security engine, multi-turn behavioral detection, organization-level identity governance, and an open-source core. Both run an AI gateway and deploy in private or cloud environments, but TrustGate secures the tool call natively rather than orchestrating external checks around it.
2. Does TrueFoundry have built-in runtime security like NeuralTrust?
TrueFoundry's guardrails run as configurable hooks that can call external moderation and PII services, so the gateway orchestrates third-party checks rather than running its own detection engine on the traffic. NeuralTrust's Security Engine is first-party and native to the gateway: it inspects each tool call inline and enforces before the call reaches its target, without depending on external services the customer has to select and maintain.
3. Can TrueFoundry detect abuse spread across a whole conversation?
TrueFoundry's guardrails evaluate each request in isolation and it documents no multi-turn behavioral engine, so a pattern deliberately spread across several individually harmless calls falls outside what a per-request check evaluates. NeuralTrust reasons across the whole conversation with multi-turn behavioral detection, which is what catches abuse designed to stay under the threshold of any single call.
4. Is TrueFoundry open source like NeuralTrust?
No. TrueFoundry's gateway is proprietary; it can be run as SaaS or self-hosted in a VPC, on-prem, or air-gapped environment, but there is no open codebase to read, audit, or run independently of a commercial relationship. NeuralTrust TrustGate's core is open source under Apache 2.0, so a team can run, inspect, and operate the gateway in production without a commercial relationship.
5. How does identity governance differ between NeuralTrust and TrueFoundry?
TrueFoundry handles identity through RBAC and an external identity provider, trusting the claims that provider asserts. NeuralTrust TrustGate adds organization-level identity governance: through org domain verification, an organization proves ownership of its email domain and membership is governed automatically by that verified boundary, giving a reliable answer to who belongs before any model or tool access is granted. That domain-anchored governance is something TrueFoundry does not provide within the gateway.
About the Author
Alessandro Pignati is Lead AI Security Researcher at NeuralTrust, where he leads research on AI and agentic security, advancing techniques to evaluate and secure large language models and autonomous AI systems. He specializes in adversarial machine learning, AI red teaming, LLM security, and AI safety, contributing to the development of secure and trustworthy AI.
NeuralTrust is an AI agent security platform, recognized in the Gartner 2025 Market Guide for AI Gateways and Guardian Agents, and the KuppingerCole 2025 Leadership Compass for Generative AI Defense. Headquartered in Barcelona with ISO 27001 certification.
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