CAIN-42 CAIN StudioHow CAIN-42 compares · AI governance & GRC
CAIN-42 vs Holistic AI
An AI governance platform for risk assessment, compliance and auditing of AI systems, with policy packs aligned to regulations such as the EU AI Act and NIST AI RMF.
What Holistic AI does well
- Structured risk assessment and audit workflows.
- Policy packs mapped to major regulations.
- Independent governance focused on compliance teams.
What CAIN-42 does differently
- Enforces at the tool-call boundary, before anything runs.
- Orders authorization through a Byzantine quorum (3-of-4): one "yes" is never enough.
- Leaves a per-action signed receipt you can verify offline with a clean-room verifier.
- Authority continuity: a change to the model, tool, memory, skill or delegation forces a re-check.
- Self-serve from $19.75/mo; runs hosted, self-hosted or air-gapped.
Capability difference
| Capability | CAIN-42 | Holistic AI | Source (verified 2026-10-14) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary focus | Runtime governance in the execution path | AI risk assessment, compliance and audit | Holistic source page verified 2026-10-14 |
| Blocks the tool call at the boundary | Yes — MCPGate halts before the tool runs | No (governance, not runtime enforcement) | |
| Byzantine-ordered authorization (quorum cert) | Yes — 3-of-4 PBFT quorum certificate | No* | |
| Per-action signed receipt, offline-verifiable | Yes — Ed25519, hash-chained, offline-verifiable | Audit records | |
| Runtime enforcement of the action | Yes — MCPGate halts before the tool runs | No (pre-deployment governance) | |
| Public entry price | $19.75/mo self-serve | Talk to sales |
When to pick which
Pick Holistic AI for governance and compliance workflows. Pick CAIN-42 when you also need the action itself blocked and recorded at run time.
Based on each vendor's public homepage and product pages, last reviewed 2026-10-14. No affiliation and no claim about their internals. "No*" means we found no public documentation of that capability, not that the vendor cannot do it.