Comparisons
COMPARISON
Locke vs AI API Gateways and Proxies
AI API gateways sit between your applications and the model provider, centralising rate limiting, cost tracking, audit logs, model routing, and sometimes content filtering. Useful if you're an engineering team building AI products. But they cover nothing for direct browser-based AI chat — the most common way sensitive data leaks — because chat.openai.com and claude.ai never touch your gateway.
When AI API gateways and proxies fits
- You are building AI-powered applications via API and need centralised rate limiting, cost allocation, and model routing.
- You need a full audit log of every API call with latency, token counts, and routing decisions for developer tooling.
- Your security team requires all model API traffic to flow through a single controlled egress point.
When Locke fits
- Your team uses browser-based AI chat tools that bypass any API gateway entirely.
- You want detection to happen before the data leaves the device — a gateway only intercepts calls after they leave the endpoint.
- You need an on-device control that works regardless of which model interface is open.
Side-by-side
| Dimension | Locke | AI gateways |
|---|---|---|
| Coverage of browser AI tools | Yes — intercepts chat inputs on-device before submission. | None — gateways only cover API calls explicitly routed through them. |
| Where inspection runs | On the device, before any network call. | On the gateway server, after data has left the endpoint. |
| Sensitive data visible to operator? | No — masked content is never transmitted. | Yes — the gateway operator can read full prompt content. |
| Primary use case | Prevent specific sensitive data from reaching any model. | Centralise API access, costs, logging, and model routing. |
| Deployment model | Per-user, on-device install (Locke desktop app coming soon) — no traffic rerouting required. | Server-side proxy — all AI traffic must be explicitly routed through it. |
Bottom line
AI gateways are right for API-based AI in your product code. They cover nothing for the browser-based chat tools your team actually uses. Locke works at the device, the moment before any network call happens — the same way whether or not a gateway was ever in the picture.
