Head-to-head · updated 13 September 2026

DataShield vs Evervault: cards are handled. What about the rest of your PII?

Evervault holds card data so your servers don't. They're good at it. PCI DSS Level 1, SOC 2 Type II. And a pitch we can't match. Separate card collection from your processor. Cut your PCI scope. If the sensitive thing in your stack is a card number: go talk to them. We have no PCI story. We're not going to pretend otherwise.

We sell the other half. The claims file. The patient record. The HR table. The client list your AI agents now query all day. We tokenize datasets at ingest. Agents query tokenized data over MCP. Turning a token back into real data is a special step. It's audited every time. We check each checked tool call against the agent's access. At the moment it runs. We then seal each choice into a hash chain. You can check it, without trusting us. Here's where the two products actually differ, sources included. Yes, some rows go to them.

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The short version

Pick DataShield when

Your sensitive data isn't a card. It's health records, claims, HR files, or customer PII. It needs to stay useful for analytics, after you protect it.
An auditor or the EU AI Act's Article 12 will one day ask you to prove an agent's access log wasn't edited. Our chain answers with math, not a policy PDF. Run the verifier.
You need to pull an agent's access mid-session. The very next tool call should fail.
Nothing may leave your own account. We self-host, on your own infrastructure, with your keys.

Pick Evervault when

PCI scope is the problem on the board slide. They're a Level 1 service provider. They say they cut PCI requirements by up to 95%. We have no PCI attestation at all.
You want to swap or multiplex payment processors, without re-collecting cards. Holding the card is the whole trick. They hold it.
You need card-native features: 3D Secure, network tokens, Card Account Updater, Apple and Google Pay. None of that is on our roadmap.
You want attested confidential compute. Their Enclaves run signed code you can verify at runtime. Our tokens never get decrypted in an enclave. They get looked up in a vault.

Bottom line: Evervault keeps card data out of your systems. We decide what an AI agent may do with the data you keep. Then we prove it. Plenty of fintechs will end up running both. That's a fine answer.

Feature by feature

Competitor cells describe what Evervault's site, pricing page, and blog say. We use the date above. If we mischaracterised something, email support@myorg.ai. We'll fix it, and credit you.

What matters	DataShield	Evervault	Edge
Audit evidence	A SHA-256 hash chain, with Ed25519-signed checkpoints. Those checkpoints are themselves chained. Verification names the exact failure: tampering, insertion, deletion, or truncation. Try the verifier.	Enclave attestation proves which code ran. We found no public tamper-evident log of who asked for what.	◆
Agent authorization	Each checked tool call passes a scope ceiling. Also an access tier, and a revocation re-check. That's before dispatch. Revocation lands mid-session.	API keys and app-level access to encrypted data. No agent ID, access tiers, or mid-session revocation described.	◆
Break-glass	Scoped, time-boxed emergency access, just for agents. It auto-revokes on its own. It can't be quietly deleted from the log.	Not offered. Not something a payments API would offer.	◆
GDPR erasure	Crypto-shred of per-subject key material. Plus ISO 27560 consent receipts. The audit chain still checks out after erasure.	They encrypt and hold the data, so deletion is possible. The effect on audit history isn't in their docs.	◆
Tokenization	Deterministic, join-preserving, vault-reversible tokens, applied at ingest. Plus quasi-identifier generalization. Dates become year, decade or age band. ZIPs become 3 or 4 digits. Phones, SSNs and emails get partial masking. Each column gets a measured cardinality-reduction score. You can still group by city, and join on client.	Encryption and tokens, built for card flows. Including network tokens issued by the card schemes. Great for payments. Not built for analytics joins.	◆
Payments and PCI	None. No PCI DSS attestation, and no card products. Not our market.	PCI DSS Level 1 service provider. Card collection iframes, 3D Secure, network tokens, ASV scans, processor routing.	◇
Confidential computing	No enclave product. Tokenization and policy protect the data. Not hardware isolation.	Enclaves: signed workloads, with runtime attestation. You can check the code that touched your data.	◇
MCP and agents	Native MCP endpoints on Auth, Ontology, and Lighthouse. MCP tool tokens with scope ceilings. Per-call metering ties back to the agent.	No AI, LLM, agent, or MCP messaging. Not on their site or blog, as of the date above.	◆
Deployment	Self-hosted, in your own cloud or data center. Or on a dedicated single-tenant server we operate. Your keys.	SaaS. Relay and Functions sit in their path by design. That's the point of the product.	◆
Maturity signals	Auth, Guardian and Lighthouse are live in production. Guardian and Lighthouse have run since April 2026. SOC 2 not yet certified, and we say so.	Founded 2018, $46M raised including a $25M Series B in March 2026. PCI DSS Level 1, SOC 2 Type II, $5B+ in transaction volume. Clients like Ramp and Rippling.	◇
Pricing	Published model, scoped instant quote, no sales wall.	Also published: $995 a month plus usage, with per-operation rates listed. Free sandbox. Credit where it's due.	◈

◆ DataShield leads◇ Evervault leads◈ comparable

We draw Evervault claims from evervault.com. Also their pricing and clients pages, and their blog. Last checked 13 September 2026. We link them below, rather than paraphrase from memory.

Three things you get here that you won't get from payments encryption

Proof that survives an audit

Attestation tells you which code ran. It doesn't tell you who asked. Or whether someone edited the record of that request later. Ours is a hash chain, with signed checkpoints. The verifier names what went wrong, not just that something did. Try it in your browser, no signup.

Authority that can change mid-flight

An analyst resigns at 4pm. Their agent is 20 minutes into a 40-minute job. We re-check the next checked tool call, and it fails closed. With an API key, the job finishes, and nobody notices. How Auth does it.

Data that stays useful after you protect it

A tokenized card is a dead end, by design. A tokenized patient ID still has to join to claims. The city column still has to group. We keep tokens deterministic. We generalize quasi-identifiers instead. Dates become year, decade or age band. ZIPs become 3 or 4 digits. Phones, SSNs and emails get partial masking. Each column gets a measured cardinality-reduction score. How the ontology layer works.

Where Evervault is genuinely stronger

We'd rather you hear this from us. Evervault has been shipping since 2018. They raised $25M more in March 2026. They hold PCI DSS Level 1 and SOC 2 Type II. We hold neither. They've processed over $5 billion in transaction volume. For names like Ramp, Rippling, and Uniswap. Their Enclaves work is real engineering. Runtime attestation of signed code beats "trust our SaaS." That's a stronger guarantee. They publish their prices too. Most of this market still won't do that. On payments, this is not a close fight. We won't stage one.

The push-back is about scope. Their own Series B post says they're moving past payments. Into wallets, ID, and healthcare. Fine, but the hard part of health data isn't holding it. It's deciding who may read it. And proving that choice later. Gartner expects most unauthorized agent transactions through 2028. Most are internal policy violations. Not attacks. An encrypted field doesn't stop an agent allowed to decrypt it. An access log nobody can check is just a text file. With good intentions.

Questions worth asking both of us

These are the questions we'd want answered. If we were buying. Ask them on every vendor call, including ours.

Can you cryptographically prove an audit log entry wasn't deleted?

DataShield: yes. Each record commits to the one before it. We sign and chain the checkpoints. Verification tells deletion apart from truncation, and from tampering. Run it against a sample chain at /verify. Evervault: their enclave attestation proves which code ran. That's a different question. We found no public tamper-evidence for access logs. Ask them to show one.

What happens to a revoked agent mid-session?

We re-check access on each checked tool call. Revocation bites on the next call. Evervault's docs describe API keys and app access to encrypted data. We found no description of agent ID, or mid-session revocation. Ask how long a stolen key keeps working. After you pull it.

How does GDPR erasure interact with the audit trail?

We crypto-shred per-subject key material, and issue an ISO 27560 consent receipt. Actor IDs in the chain carry HMAC commitments. The evidence still checks out. Even once the subject is gone. Evervault can delete data they hold. The effect on audit history isn't in their docs. Ask whether erasing a subject breaks the record.

Is DataShield an Evervault alternative for non-payments PII?

For health, HR, and client data, headed into analytics and AI agents: yes. That's the honest edge of the overlap. For card data, no. We have no PCI DSS attestation. No card collection iframe. No 3D Secure, and no network tokens. If a prospect needs both, run Evervault for the card rail. Run DataShield for everything the agents touch.

Enclaves or tokenization: which one do we actually need?

Different guarantees. An enclave lets code process plaintext in isolation. It proves which code it was. Tokenization means the plaintext never reaches the query surface at all. There's nothing to leak if the workload misbehaves. Enclaves suit key handling and signing. Tokenization suits datasets that dozens of agents will query for years. Analysts too. We do the second.

Does DataShield have SOC 2?

Not yet, and we won't imply otherwise. Evervault does, along with PCI Level 1. That's a fair mark against us. What we offer instead: Auth is live. It ships with a public threat model. Also a verifier anyone can run. Guardian and Lighthouse have been in production since April 2026. Details on the security page.

Evervault's hero: "Take control of your payments." Card collection separated from processors, with minimal PCI scope. - evervault.com, 13 Sep 2026
$25M Series B led by Ribbit Capital, $46M raised in total, $5B+ transaction volume, 100M+ encrypted tokens a month, expanding into wallets, ID, and healthcare. - Evervault blog, 5 Mar 2026
PCI DSS Level 1 and SOC 2 Type II, with clients including Ramp, FlightHub, Tebex, and XP. - evervault.com/customers, 13 Sep 2026
Published pricing: $995 a month plus usage, $0.03 per 3D Secure authentication, $0.03 per network token. - evervault.com/pricing, 13 Sep 2026
Enclaves: workloads are signed by you and attestable at runtime, built on confidential computing hardware. - Evervault blog, 10 Jan 2024
80% or more of unauthorized agent transactions through 2028 will be internal policy violations rather than attacks. - Gartner, 2026

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