Sightengine

Overview

Sightengine is a cloud API and web service for assessing and moderating images, video and text, with tools for audio and media-authenticity checks. It best suits developers and businesses building moderation into social networks, messaging apps or marketplaces. Its breadth is a strength, but video access and usage ceilings vary enough by plan to make capacity a key buying decision.

Key features

Image and video moderation covers nudity, hate, violence, drugs, weapons and self-harm. Teams can tune image thresholds and rules to fit their community policies, which is valuable when a fixed moderation standard would be too blunt. Sightengine also detects AI-generated images, videos, speech and music, along with deepfakes.

OCR and QR moderation, image and video search, age estimation, liveness checks and recapture detection extend it beyond a basic content filter. Text moderation is included with Starter; audio moderation and several of the additional checks are part of Pro. There is no human-review workflow, so teams that need people to adjudicate flagged material will need another process.

API examples and SDKs cover Curl, Python, PHP and Node.js. Sightengine says customer content is not shared with third parties and no human moderator is involved. Its API servers support HTTPS and TLS 1.3 and have an A rating from Qualys SSL Labs; its data-center partners are described as ISO 27001, SOC 2 and PCI DSS compliant. Enterprise adds SAML single sign-on and region-specific end-user data processing.

Pricing

The Free plan costs nothing and is capped at 1 req/s, with online documentation as support. It has daily and monthly usage limits and excludes video processing and live-stream support. Sightengine says customers should not subscribe to more than one Free plan, so it is best treated as a limited starting point rather than a way to scale usage across accounts.

Starter costs $29 a month and includes 10,000 operations per month, with additional operations at $0.002 each. It adds visual moderation, AI image and video detection for videos up to 50MB, text moderation and deepfake detection, while retaining a 1 req/s limit and excluding live streams. This is the more appropriate entry point for a modest, non-live workload; the per-operation charge makes usage beyond the included quota a cost to track.

Pro costs $99 a month and includes 40,000 operations, with additional operations at $0.002 each. It raises the rate limit to 10 req/s and supports video up to 500MB, live moderation, audio moderation, image and video search, liveness, recapture and age estimation, and AI music detection. Five concurrent video jobs suit teams processing several video tasks at once, but workloads exceeding the quota still incur additional-operation charges.

Enterprise has custom pricing for custom volume, models and classes, geo-fencing, enterprise SLAs, a dedicated support engineer and custom capacity. It is the plan for organizations needing tailored scale or enterprise controls; a listed price is not available. A free trial is offered.

Platforms

Sightengine is available through an API and on the web. It is a cloud deployment, not a self-hosted option.

Who it's for

Choose Sightengine if your product needs programmable checks across several media types and you can match the plan's operation quota, request rate and video limits to your volume. Developers benefit from the documented SDK examples, while teams with specific community standards can configure image rules. Look elsewhere if human review must be part of the moderation workflow or if Starter's video and live-stream restrictions do not fit.

Pros and cons

• Pros: Broad coverage across image, video, text and audio, plus AI-media and deepfake detection, can consolidate several moderation checks.
• Pros: Adjustable image rules let teams adapt thresholds to their community policies.
• Pros: Enterprise offers SAML single sign-on and region-specific end-user data processing.
• Cons: Free excludes video and live streams, and Starter still excludes live moderation.
• Cons: Starter's 1 req/s rate and 50MB video cap may constrain real-time or larger-video workloads; Pro raises these limits but costs $99 a month.
• Cons: There is no human-review workflow, and paid plans charge $0.002 per operation beyond their monthly quotas.

Alternatives

Consider Social Media Moderation Software or AI Content Moderation Software to compare products in those categories. Choose PlayFab if its free-to-start model and broad platform support suit your project. WebPurify is another option, with a paid model and a free trial. Amazon Rekognition Content Moderation offers a free tier for video analysis during the first 12 months after account creation. Fren One has a free beta plan. Threadmodo offers a free plan for comment moderation on one connected page, up to 300 comments per month. Hive Moderation is a paid option with free credits after adding a payment method. ToxMod is another freemium moderation option. ActiveFence UGC Protection is another option.

Verdict

Sightengine is a strong fit for developers and businesses that need a configurable, API-driven moderation layer across multiple media types, especially if Pro's live, audio and larger-video capabilities matter. Its main drawback is the sharp plan boundary: Free and Starter omit live moderation, quotas and request rates are finite, and no human-review workflow is included. Choose it for automated breadth; look elsewhere if human adjudication or more flexible entry-level video access is essential.