DataGrail vs Ketch: how they compare in 2026

Vera is marketed as the organizing idea of the product, with the company calling itself an Agentic Data Privacy Platform. Its functions are specific: detecting and investigating new cookies and proposing consent rules, autofilling PIAs, DPIAs, AI risk assessments and transfer impact assessments from platform data, flagging risks with action plans, and answering questions on demand. Without Vera the platform still does its job: the Live Data Map, Request Manager, Consent Management, assessments and Risk Register are the deterministic products the company sold before the agent existed. The privacy policy describes the AI features as features within the Services that the customer initiates, and the company describes Vera as making existing privacy jobs faster.

The AI drives a core capability, and the privacy platform underneath would still work without it. The Ketch Agent Network is described as the orchestration layer powering every product, with agents dispatched for discovery, risk, consent configuration, documentation and reporting, reading contracts and classifying data fields; an AI Governance module is sold alongside. Remove the models and consent capture and enforcement, the permission store, data subject request intake and fulfillment, identity resolution and the regulations hub remain, which is a working privacy platform. The master services agreement defines AI Technology as one component of the Services rather than the Services themselves. The May 2026 Agent Network release is the point at which the AI layer became central to the marketing; the structure is a privacy platform with a model layer.

Assessments are described as evidence based because they draw on the Live Data Map's live system inventory rather than on a survey, set against a static data map that is out of date the moment it is complete. Vera is said to use global privacy context to produce accurate PIAs and DPIAs. No accuracy figure, test set, evaluation, error rate or benchmark is published, and the published material does not address hallucination under any name. Nothing describes what happens when an assessment Vera autofills is wrong, and no correction or review record is described beyond the general approval gate.

Answers are tied to sources, and no accuracy figure is published. The agent network page says the agent answers from what it knows about the customer's systems, configurations and processing activities, that every answer comes with a source, and that what a vendor may do with data is extracted from the legal text and cited to the clause. The regulations hub describes laws, enforcement actions and settlement terms summarized and mapped to where the customer operates. Master services agreement section 7.3 says outputs may be inaccurate, incomplete or inappropriate and must be reviewed and validated before use. No accuracy measurement, test set or evaluation is published. The product cites the customer's own contracts and configurations, and the regulatory content does not name its sources.

Vera will detect new cookies, investigate them and suggest rules, and apply them when the user gives the word, which puts the acting step behind an explicit human decision. The home page names the principle twice more, as AI powered action with human control and as secure AI governed by humans, and the privacy policy describes the AI features as initiated by the customer. A six stage prompt protection scheme is aimed at prompt injection, a risk for an agent reading third party web content and inbound requests. No threshold is published at which Vera acts alone, nothing says which of its actions can be reversed, no confidence signal is described, and the six stages are given as a count without explanation.

The agreement makes the customer the reviewer, and the product offers real review surfaces, but no full control structure is published. Terms section 7.3 makes the customer responsible for reviewing and validating AI outputs before relying on them. The agent network page says the agent flags where a contract's permissions and a system's configuration disagree rather than acting on the mismatch, and that every answer carries a source for review. Data subject request automation keeps an auditable trail for every request, and the Permission Vault keeps consent decisions as auditable evidence. Not published: thresholds for when an agent acts alone, which agent actions run without approval, and any route back after a wrong output beyond the customer's own correction.

The logo wall includes Major League Soccer, HubSpot, FanDuel, Netgear, Reformation, Dexcom, Okta, GoFundMe, Life360, Vercel, Databricks and Zillow. The testimonials carry names, job titles and employers, and several titles are legal buyers: a Vice President Legal at Poppulo, a Senior Privacy Analyst at nCino, and Associate General Counsel and Data Protection Officer titles on the customers page. Figures are attached to named deployments. Major League Soccer unified privacy across 30 independent clubs, mapping more than 2,500 systems and automating more than 200 data subject requests, and a named customer reports consent policy review time down by over 75 percent since switching. No result carries a date or a measurement period. DataGrail also publishes customer case studies.

Testimonials carry no attribution, and the only figure is aggregate scale. The home page carries quotes from legal, marketing and privacy operations teams, including that Ketch is software lawyers can use, without a named person or organization, and the figure of 67.2 billion consent transactions a month used across the site is a scale claim rather than a deployment outcome. A Customers page and customer stories are linked in the navigation.

The home page states that there is no training on your data, and the privacy policy adds that DataGrail does not permit AI service providers to use customer data to train their AI or machine learning models. The platform is described as single tenant, and customers provision cloud storage in their own environments with limited permissions granted to DataGrail, which keeps much customer content outside the vendor's estate. DataGrail is the processor of all Customer Data and the controller only of visitor and account data. Encryption is AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.2 in transit. Privilege and work product are not addressed, although the buyer is often in house counsel. Customer data is used to generate outputs and to operate and improve the Services, a phrase that does not name training but is broader than the home page line. The agreement that governs the product is not published, so none of these commitments is contractual.

Most commitments are in the published agreement, and privilege is not addressed. Master services agreement section 7.2 says Ketch will not, and will not let any third party, use customer data to train AI or machine learning models, with Feedback and Usage Data carved out for improving its AI Technology. The DPA states a multi tenant environment, Ketch's home page lists role based access, SSO and SCIM, and the Pro plan adds single tenant data residency. DPA Schedule 3 keeps data for the life of the contract plus thirty days, then deletes or anonymizes it automatically, and DPA section 9 gives destruction or return on written request. Section 7.2 binds third party model providers on training, and the DPA commits subprocessors to the government access protections of the standard contractual clauses. The DPA says a current subprocessor list with countries is published at a stated URL. Nothing addresses privilege or work product.

The terms of service carry a clause headed as a disclaimer that the offering is not a substitute for legal advice, stating that the content, products, resources and services made available through the Site are not intended to provide legal advice. The same terms open by stating that they do not govern the subscription services on the DataGrail Platform, so the disclaimer covers the marketing website, not the software that autofills data protection impact assessments and generates recommendations for a legal team. Nothing published says where the tooling stops and legal judgment begins in the Platform, or what a privacy lawyer must review before relying on an assessment Vera drafted. No professional obligation is named, and no jurisdiction limit is stated for the product's regulatory conclusions. The Master Services Agreement that governs the Platform is not published.

Ketch takes a clear position on advice versus tooling, but says little about a supervising lawyer's duties and names no jurisdiction limits. Master services agreement section 3.4 states that the services, documentation and any communication from Ketch are not intended and should not be taken as legal advice, and section 9.2 that outputs are not to be relied on as a substitute for professional advice; section 7.3 requires the customer to validate AI outputs for accuracy, legality and compliance and bars representing them as made by a person. The buyer is stated as privacy, legal and security teams. Nothing addresses how the product supports a supervising lawyer's duties beyond the review obligation, and no jurisdiction limit is named beyond the export control bar in section 3.3.

Four specific commitments are published: no training on customer data, no permission for AI service providers to train on customer data, a six stage prompt protection scheme, and human governance of agent action. The company also sells AI governance as a product, with a DataGrail for AI Governance solution and AI risk assessments in its assessment suite, and publishes no governance framework for its own AI. There is no responsible AI page, no named owner accountable for Vera's behavior, no description of evaluation or red teaming before release, no published results and no model card. Nothing addresses bias, although Vera's risk flags and assessment drafts shape what a privacy team investigates. The six stages are given as a number and never described.

A governance commitment is made without a published mechanism, testing regime or accountable owner. Master services agreement section 7.1 states that Ketch designs and operates its AI Technology with commercially reasonable measures consistent with industry practice and maintains policies and processes reasonably designed to assess and mitigate material risks, which is a contractual undertaking to have a governance process rather than a description of one. Ketch also sells an AI Governance product, which governs the customer's AI rather than describing Ketch's own. No framework, ISO 42001 or equivalent, description of testing before release or statement about uneven output is published.

Two factor authentication runs through Okta, Google SSO and other providers, customers provision cloud storage with limited permissions granted to DataGrail, and data is encrypted with AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.2 in transit. Backups are daily and encrypted, the recovery time objective is 24 hours, and a public status page records past incidents. Penetration tests run every six months with issues handled within a day, alongside a bug bounty program. Service providers are named at length in the privacy policy, and the AI processing route is identified. Transfers use Standard Contractual Clauses or the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. Retention commits only to keeping data as long as necessary, with anonymized data kept as long as DataGrail decides is commercially necessary. The security page was last modified in November 2022, before the agentic product, and none of the single tenant, no training or prompt protection claims appear on it.

Retention, deletion, access control, subprocessors and incident practice are all published and specific, in the DPA of 7 May 2026 and its Schedule 3. Customer data is kept for the life of the contract and thirty days, then deleted or permanently anonymized by an automated process; server logs are kept twelve months, and free services carry no retention obligation. DPA section 9 gives destruction or return on written request, and terms section 12.5 fixes the thirty day window. Access control covers formal provisioning and removal, regular access reviews, staff confidentiality agreements and annual training, TLS 1.2 and 1.3 in transit, SSE-S3 encryption at rest and a named data protection officer. DPA section 5.2 publishes a current subprocessor list with countries at a stated URL, with notice of additions by subscription and a thirty day objection right. DPA section 7 commits to incident notice without undue delay, with cause and remediation. Schedule 3 states a six hour recovery point and twenty four hour recovery time objective, annual penetration testing and annual restoration tests.

The terms of service govern the datagrail.io website and say in their first paragraph that they do not govern the subscription services on the DataGrail Platform. Those are subject to a Master Services Agreement executed with each subscribing customer, which is not published. The site terms allocate loss for website use only: the as is disclaimer, the exclusion of consequential, incidental, indirect, exemplary, punitive and special damages with no cap stated, and an indemnity running only from the user to DataGrail. No indemnity, cap, warranty on output, service level or insurance position for the Platform is published.

What Ketch stands behind is published and specific, including that it stands behind nothing on wrong output. Master services agreement section 10.1 gives an IP infringement indemnity with the exclusions in 10.2 and the remedies in 10.3, ending in termination with a pro rata refund; section 11.1 caps each party's aggregate liability at fees paid in the preceding twelve months and 11.2 excludes indirect loss including loss of data; section 9.1 warrants material conformity to documentation with the exclusive remedies in 12.3 and 12.4; section 7.3 places all responsibility for AI outputs on the customer and 9.2 disclaims warranties of accuracy and reliability; section 13 removes indemnity, warranty and, where enforceable, all liability for free services, with a cap of one thousand dollars otherwise. No insurance is stated, and order forms and the DPA prevail over the MSA on conflict.

More than two thousand connections are published, each with its own page, with Salesforce, Okta, Shopify, Zendesk and Webflow surfaced in the navigation and the full catalog browsable. The integrations feed the Live Data Map so that systems holding personal data are detected and cataloged automatically as they come online, and they carry data subject request fulfillment out to connected applications so access and deletion happen in the source systems. Coverage is stated across third party SaaS, internal databases and warehouses, and home grown systems reached through a prebuilt API. A separate developer documentation site is published, and identity integration names Okta and Google SSO for authentication. The underlying mapping technology is covered by an issued United States patent. The connected systems are the marketing, support and data stack rather than a document management system.

Real integrations, documented, with depth described for some. The agent network page names Braze and Snowflake among hundreds of SaaS connections and says what the connection does: it classifies every field by sensitivity, category and purpose and keeps the inventory current as the stack changes. Public documentation is published at docs.ketch.com, and an Integrations page is linked in the navigation. The connections run to data systems, CRMs and marketing platforms, not to document, matter or electronic billing systems. For a privacy platform sold to an in house team, those data systems are the relevant estate.

The platform is described as single tenant. Residency is stated in the privacy policy: DataGrail is a Delaware corporation with offices in the United States that collects, processes, transfers and stores data within the United States, with European transfers under Standard Contractual Clauses or the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. The security page adds a distinction between processing and storage, since customers provision cloud storage in their own environments with only limited permissions granted to DataGrail. No region options are offered and no cloud region is named. The single tenant claim appears once, as three words on the home page, with no supporting description, including on the security page.

The tenancy model is stated clearly, and the residency detail is partial. DPA section 6.2.2 says Ketch runs a multi tenant cloud environment. Schedule 3 says the infrastructure runs on Amazon Web Services across multiple availability zones, with backups in a separate geographic region, and Ketch's home page says the Pro plan adds single tenant data residency. No region is listed, and nothing states where model processing happens as distinct from storage. The transfer provisions in DPA section 12 assume transfers from Europe to the United States under standard contractual clauses or the Data Privacy Framework.

Both the trust center and the security page carry a heading reading Certifications followed by an image of logos, with no text. No framework is named in words, and no auditor, certifying body, scope, observation period, report date or route to obtain a report is given, including on request. The security page also describes practices: penetration tests every six months with issues handled within a day, a bug bounty program with a published reporting route, and a public status page recording past incidents. The trust center is a hub of links to the privacy policy, terms, security page and data rights portal rather than a document portal. The security page was last modified in November 2022.

Certification is stated, kept up under the contract and evidenced on request, and no report is available without asking. DPA section 6.2.1 says Ketch holds ISO 27001 certification and SSAE 18 SOC 2 Type II reports for the Services and will maintain them for the term, with reports available on written request under confidentiality. Schedule 3 adds ISO 27001:2022, annual independent assessment and annual penetration testing, and the home page adds ISO 27701. A trust center exists at trust.ketch.com. No auditor or coverage period is stated.

The privacy policy has a dedicated AI Enabled Service Providers section. It states that DataGrail uses AI services available through Amazon Web Services to process information customers submit, solely on its behalf and under its instructions, and that DataGrail does not permit AI service providers to use customer data to train their AI or machine learning models. No model, version, family or model provider behind the AWS layer is identified. No location for inference is stated beyond the general United States processing commitment, and no commitment to notify customers when the model or provider changes is published. Vera is the agent's product name.

Ketch refers to AI Technology and underlying models without naming what sits underneath. The master services agreement defines AI Technology generically, section 7.4 refers to Ketch's underlying models and algorithms, and the privacy policy lists AI and machine learning services as a category of service provider. No model or model provider is named in the agreement, the DPA or the privacy policy. DPA section 5.2 says a current subprocessor list with identities and countries is published at ketch.com/subprocessors, with notice of additions by subscription.

No pricing information is published at any level, including the unit of charge. The main navigation carries Product, Solutions, Customers, Resources and Company, and no pricing entry appears there or in the footer. Calls to action on the site lead to a demo request or a contact form. Nothing states whether charging runs per seat, integration, data subject request, domain or entity, and no figure, band or range appears. Older solution pages describe a self service Privacy Control Center that can be bought as a complete solution or à la carte, with no number, unit or term. No self service purchase route appears on any current page.

The unit and structure are stated in the agreement without a figure. Master services agreement section 5.2 bases fees on the plan and usage limits in the order form, measured monthly, with defined units of Unique Identities and Contacts and automatic movement to the next plan on overage. Section 5.1 gives sixty days' notice of renewal price changes. Section 12.2 renews for the longer of the initial term or twelve months, with thirty days' notice of nonrenewal, and section 13 governs a free tier, Ketch Free, offered without warranty. Ketch's home page names a Pro tier with single tenant residency, and a pricing page is linked in the navigation.

The product is sold separately to Legal and to Security, each with its own solution page. Regulation pages cover the EU GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act, the California Delete Act, the Colorado Privacy Act and the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act, plus a guide to United States privacy laws generally. Use case pages cover responsible data discovery, records of processing activities, do not sell and share, AI governance, retail and managed services. The platform is pitched at privacy teams from one person to twenty one. No regulation, jurisdiction or type of organization is named as out of scope, and the named regimes are United States law plus the GDPR.

Buyers are stated as privacy operations, legal, security and marketing teams, with industry solutions for retail and ecommerce, technology, financial services, healthcare, communications and media, automotive, travel and hospitality, and education, and regulatory coverage stated as GDPR, CCPA and CPRA, emerging US state laws through a US Privacy Law Atlas, and privacy and AI laws generally. No jurisdiction, regulation or industry is named as unsupported, and no law firm use is described.