TL;DR
Pick Strac if your primary use case is OCR redaction inside images and PDFs uploaded to AI tools, or if you already need their broader SaaS DLP suite (Slack, Gmail, Drive, Salesforce content scanning).
Pick Northbeams if you want browser, desktop, and CLI shadow-AI coverage under one per-user price, with no module-by-module SKU stacking and a 14-day free trial that drops to a free permanent tier.
What Strac sells
Strac is a Y Combinator (S22) DLP platform, ~12 employees, ~$4M raised, last round July 2022. They started as cloud-native DLP and have spent 2025–2026 repositioning around "AI usage governance." Their architecture is modular: each surface is a separately-priced product line. To get AI-tool monitoring across browser, desktop, SaaS, and MCP traffic, you typically buy three to five of these modules.
SaaS DLP
~40 connectors: Slack, Gmail, M365, Salesforce, Zendesk, Notion, Jira, Drive.
Endpoint DLP
Mac / Windows / Linux agent. File-system and clipboard hooks.
Cloud DLP / DSPM
AWS, Azure, GCP, on-prem MS SQL / SAP scanning.
Email Security
Inbound and outbound email redaction.
Browser DLP
Chrome / Edge MV3 extension for web upload and paste inspection.
GenAI / LLM DLP
Prompt inspection and redaction across ~50 AI tools.
MCP DLP
An MCP server (strac-m365-dlp) sitting between agent and SharePoint / OneDrive. M365 only today.
Data Discovery / DSPM
Cross-surface classification.
Pricing, side by side
Strac
~$30–$50 / user / yr per module
Quote-only · Per-module pricing · 30-day free trial · No published seat minimum
To match Northbeams' coverage you stack: Browser DLP + Endpoint DLP + GenAI DLP + (for MCP) MCP DLP. Their own AI-governance comparison post discloses the $30–$50 / user / yr per-module band. Source: Strac AI governance tools post.
Northbeams
$15 / user / mo ($12 annual)
No seat minimum · No annual minimum · Free 14-day Sentinel trial, no card · Free Beam tier
One SKU. Browser + Mac + PC + CLI under one per-user price. Full pricing.
Where Strac wins
- OCR redaction inside images and PDFs. The single most defensible Strac feature. If your team pastes screenshots into ChatGPT regularly and that's your highest-risk vector, Strac is genuinely better at catching it. (We're shipping OCR in Q4 2026.)
- Mature SaaS DLP suite. 40+ connectors with action surface (alert, label, redact, mask, block, delete) for SaaS apps. We don't compete on at-rest SaaS scanning.
- Email DLP module. Out of Northbeams' scope.
- Cloud DSPM for AWS / Azure / GCP / on-prem databases. Out of Northbeams' scope.
- Enterprise logo book. UiPath, Crypto.com, Databricks, thredUP. We have composite quotes; they have signed enterprise references.
Where Northbeams wins
- Single per-user price covering browser + desktop + CLI. Strac stacks 3–5 modules to do the same job. The procurement math gets ugly fast.
- Native AI desktop app coverage. Northbeams watches Claude Desktop, ChatGPT Desktop, Cursor, Granola via process and outbound-connection events on Mac and PC. Strac's endpoint agent operates at the file-system and clipboard layer, not in-process prompt capture.
- CLI coding-agent coverage. Claude Code, Aider, Cursor agent mode caught natively. Strac has no documented CLI agent coverage.
- Generic MCP Gateway, on Sentinel. Strac's MCP DLP is one Microsoft 365 MCP server (
strac-m365-dlp) that you run as your only MCP for SharePoint and OneDrive. Northbeams ships an in-path MCP Gateway that wraps every MCP server your team has configured in Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Claude Code, with 10 catalogued servers (filesystem, GitHub, Slack, Postgres, Puppeteer, Google Drive, Stripe, Brave Search, Memory, Sequential Thinking) and per-tool allow / warn / block. Yours, theirs, anyone's. - Per-user shadow-AI attribution + one-click block / sandbox / allow as a first-class workflow. Strac's UI is a security-analyst rule builder.
- Productized EU AI Act Article 4 evidence pack at the Sentinel tier. Strac mentions EU AI Act in marketing but does not ship a packaged evidence binder.
- Vanta and Drata one-click integration in our Fleet tier. Strac does not advertise either integration.
- Public coverage scorecard at /coverage, with ~700 AI sites listed and methodology on GitHub. Strac claims "50+ AI tools" without publishing the list.
- Funded velocity. Strac last raised in July 2022 ($3.5M seed) at ~12 employees. The product surface area for a 12-person team to maintain across 8 modules is a real risk for buyers signing multi-year contracts.
The feature checklist
| Capability | Northbeams | Strac |
|---|---|---|
| One SKU covers browser + desktop + CLI | Yes | No (3–5 modules) |
| Free permanent tier | Yes (Beam) | No |
| Free trial, no card | 14-day Sentinel | 30-day |
| Public per-user pricing | Yes | Quote only |
| Browser extension AI-tool catalogue | ~700 tools | ~50 tools claimed, no list |
| Native AI desktop app coverage (Claude Desktop, ChatGPT Desktop, Cursor, Granola) | Yes (process + outbound conn) | File / clipboard hooks, not process watch |
| CLI coding-agent coverage (Claude Code, Aider) | Yes | No |
| OCR for image / PDF prompt uploads | No (Q4 roadmap) | Yes (flagship) |
| Generic MCP Gateway (in-path) | Yes (10 servers, 3 clients, per-tool rules) | One M365 MCP server only |
| SaaS at-rest scanning (Slack, M365, Drive) | No | Yes (~40 connectors) |
| Email DLP / encryption | No | Yes |
| Cloud DSPM (AWS, Azure, GCP) | No | Yes |
| Public coverage scorecard | Yes | No |
| Productized EU AI Act Article 4 evidence pack | Yes (Sentinel) | No |
| Vanta / Drata one-click integration | Yes (Fleet) | Not advertised |
| SAML SSO + SCIM | Yes (Fleet) | Yes |
| SIEM streaming | Yes (Fleet) | Yes |
Which one should you pick?
Pick Strac if your shadow-AI risk is dominated by image and PDF uploads (OCR-required), and you also want to consolidate SaaS DLP + Cloud DSPM + Email DLP under one vendor. Their breadth across adjacent surfaces is real and we don't compete there.
Pick Northbeams if your shadow-AI risk is dominated by browser AI tools, desktop AI apps, and CLI coding agents. That is the shape of risk most teams actually have in 2026. You will pay one per-user price instead of stacking three to five Strac modules, and you'll get the desktop and CLI coverage that Strac doesn't ship.
Try Northbeams free for 14 days.
Full Sentinel features. No card. No annual contract. Drops to the free Beam tier if you don't subscribe.
Sources
- strac.io homepage (modular product line)
- Strac AI DLP blog post (AI governance positioning)
- Strac MCP DLP launch (M365 MCP server)
- Strac AI governance tools comparison (per-module pricing band)
- Tracxn funding profile ($4M raised, ~12 employees, last round 2022)
- Strac G2 reviews
Last updated 2026-05-09. Pricing and features change; we re-verify quarterly. If something here is out of date, email hello@northbeams.com and we'll fix it.