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Sightengine Moderation API Review

Sightengine Moderation API is an AI-powered tool for real-time content moderation and media analysis across image, video, and text feeds.

shipped Nov 21, 2025buildpaid
BuildObservability & GuardrailsContent Moderation
Sightengine Moderation API — product screenshot

Why it matters

1Offers 120+ moderation classes for image and video content analysis.
2Achieved 98.3% accuracy in an independent benchmark by the University of Rochester and University of Kansas on 80,000 images.
3Provides per-generator confidence scores for AI-generated content, identifying models like Midjourney v6 or Stable Diffusion XL.
4Supports real-time API scoring with sub-second response times for enterprise-scale performance.

Stork’s verdict on Sightengine Moderation API

Sightengine offers granular content moderation and deepfake detection, but its API-only design means you'll build your own human review workflow.

Sightengine Moderation API reviewed by Stork AI · stork.ai/en/sightengine-moderation-api

Specs

API Available

Yes, public API

overview

What is Sightengine Moderation API?

Sightengine Moderation API is an AI-powered content moderation tool developed by Sightengine that enables developers and platform operators to automatically detect and filter unwanted content across images, videos, and text. It also provides advanced capabilities for identifying AI-generated media and deepfakes, crucial for verifying media authenticity and combating misinformation.

features

Key Features of Sightengine Moderation API

Sightengine Moderation API provides a comprehensive suite of features for automated content analysis and safety, leveraging AI models trained specifically for user-generated content.

  • Real-time API scoring for nudity, violence, hate symbols, and deepfakes.
  • Image Moderation with over 120 granular moderation classes.
  • Video Moderation for live streams and pre-recorded video content.
  • Text Moderation to detect and filter unwanted text-based content.
  • Audio Moderation for transcribing and detecting profanity.
  • AI Image Detection to identify AI-generated images from models like DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion.
  • Deepfake Detection to identify face swaps and AI manipulation in media.
  • AI Video Detection for AI-generated video content (e.g., Sora, Veo).
  • Circumvention detection for abusive links, QR codes, and embedded contact information.
  • Near-duplicate content detection to identify repeated or slightly altered content.
  • Restricted activities and products screening (e.g., smoking, gambling, sextoys).
  • OCR capabilities to extract text from images and videos for further analysis.

use cases

Who Should Use Sightengine Moderation API?

Sightengine Moderation API is primarily designed for developers and platform operators who require automated, scalable content moderation and media analysis capabilities for user-generated content.

  • Social networking and dating platforms to maintain safe digital spaces and validate user profile images.
  • Online marketplaces to detect and filter unwanted product images, prevent fraud, and screen restricted items.
  • Gaming platforms to moderate user-generated content and prevent spammy behavior or abuse.
  • Journalism and fact-checking organizations for rapid verification of user-submitted news images and deepfake detection.
  • Any platform handling user-generated images, videos, or text that needs to build an efficient and scalable content analysis pipeline.

how to use

How to Use Sightengine Moderation API

Integrating Sightengine Moderation API involves standard API calls to submit content for analysis and receive real-time moderation scores. The process typically begins with obtaining API credentials and referencing the official documentation.

  • 1Register for a Sightengine account and obtain your API credentials (User and Secret keys).
  • 2Refer to the official API documentation at https://sightengine.com/docs/ for detailed endpoint specifications and request formats.
  • 3Integrate the API into your application by sending HTTP POST requests with image, video, or text content to the relevant moderation endpoints.
  • 4Process the JSON response, which includes detailed moderation scores and classifications for various categories (e.g., nudity, violence, AI-generated).
  • 5Implement custom logic within your application to act on the moderation scores, such as flagging content for human review, automatically blocking it, or applying content filters.
  • 6Continuously monitor API usage and review the status page at https://status.sightengine.com/ for service health updates.

pricing

Sightengine Moderation API Pricing & Plans

Sightengine Moderation API operates on a usage-based pricing model, where costs are determined by the volume of content analyzed and the specific moderation features utilized. Detailed pricing tiers, including per-unit costs for image, video, and text analysis, are available on the official Sightengine pricing page at https://sightengine.com/pricing. The platform offers various plans designed to scale with different enterprise needs, from startups to large-scale platforms requiring high-throughput moderation.

Pros

  • +Enterprise-scale API performance with sub-second response times and batch processing capabilities.
  • +Broad content moderation breadth, offering over 120 granular classification classes for nuanced policy enforcement.
  • +Extensive AI detection coverage, identifying content from a wide array of AI generators and providing per-generator confidence scores.
  • +Specialized focus on AI-generated media and deepfake detection across images, video, and audio.
  • +Highly customizable and fine-tuned for specific content moderation needs, particularly for user-generated content.

Cons

  • Reported variations in AI detection accuracy, with detection rates dropping significantly for some emerging generative AI models (e.g., 18-30% on Flux models).
  • Some SDKs, such as the Python client (last updated 2018) and Node.js (2022), have reported maintenance gaps.
  • Limited feedback on traditional B2B review platforms due to its API-first nature, making user sentiment primarily found in developer communities.
  • Two 1-star Trustpilot reviews from April 2025 cited issues with enterprise sales responsiveness.
  • API-only architecture requires technical teams to build custom moderation UIs, escalation logic, and enforcement callbacks, as it lacks a built-in human review system or workflow layer.

Policies

Pricing Page

View Pricing

Similar Tools

Sightengine Moderation API vs Competitors

Sightengine Moderation API is positioned as an API-first content moderation service, distinguishing itself from general cloud vision APIs by training its models specifically on user-generated content and offering granular classification.

1
Amazon Rekognition

Offers robust image and video content moderation with deep integration into the AWS ecosystem, enabling automated workflows with other AWS services.

Similar to Sightengine, it focuses on visual content moderation (images and videos) but provides tighter integration for AWS-native teams and supports custom moderation models.

2
Azure AI Content Safety

Provides a unified API for text and image moderation with severity levels and strong integration with the Microsoft Azure ecosystem, particularly for LLMs and generative AI applications.

It extends beyond Sightengine's primary visual focus by offering comprehensive text moderation and granular severity scores, making it ideal for platforms already on Azure.

3
Hive Moderation

Delivers comprehensive multimodal moderation across image, video, text, and audio, with dedicated models for specific categories like CSAM and deepfake detection.

Hive offers a broader range of content types and a more granular classification architecture than Sightengine, often including enterprise-level features like a moderation dashboard and human review.

4

Provides a free and simple API for text and basic image moderation, serving as a low-barrier entry point for integrating content safety.

While free and easy to use, it offers less specialized visual detection and lacks video or audio moderation compared to Sightengine's more focused and granular visual content analysis.

5

Offers deep, customizable multimodal moderation with a focus on compliance requirements and tunable safety thresholds across various content types.

Mixpeek provides a highly customizable and comprehensive solution for text, image, video, and audio moderation, aiming for deeper integration and compliance features than Sightengine.