TL;DR
Pick Teramind if you are a contact-center / BPO operator where agent surveillance is contractually expected, you need video evidence of insider-threat fraud cases, or you already run their UAM / DLP stack and you want the new AI features bolted on.
Pick Northbeams if you have engineers, regulated employees, or a European footprint, and the method matters as much as the visibility. Northbeams catches AI usage without ever recording a keystroke or capturing a screen.
What Teramind sells
Teramind is a User Activity Monitoring (UAM), DLP, and Insider Threat Detection platform founded 2014, ~145 employees, ~$16M ARR, lightly funded. They sell tiered plans: Starter ($14 / user / mo, no AI features), UAM ($28, full activity recording + keystroke logging + AI conversation recording), DLP ($32, UAM + 200 prepackaged blocking rules + sensitive content redaction), and Enterprise (DLP + screen OCR engine, fraud detection, custom). Five-seat minimum across all plans. AI features sit in UAM and DLP, not in the $14 Starter tier.
Their Agentic AI Governance product launched March 3, 2026, marketed as capturing "every prompt sent, every response received, every tool accessed" via the existing surveillance mechanisms: screen recording, keystroke replay, OCR of screenshots, clipboard hooks, and network-handshake fingerprinting.
Pricing, side by side
Teramind
$14 / $28 / $32 / user / mo
5-seat minimum across all plans · AI features only at $28+ · Annual billing default · Demo only, no free trial
UAM at $28 includes "AI Conversations Recording" and "AI Data Exfiltration Control." DLP at $32 adds 200 prepackaged blocking rules. Source: Teramind licensing KB.
Northbeams
$15 / user / mo ($12 annual)
No seat minimum · No annual minimum · Free 14-day Sentinel trial, no card
Self-serve sign-up. Drop to free Beam tier after trial if you don't subscribe. Full pricing.
The mechanism difference
The two products both call themselves "AI governance" but they monitor AI use through opposite mechanisms.
Teramind, in their own words
From their public ChatGPT-monitoring product page: "Record full ChatGPT sessions showing prompts and responses." Their keystroke-logger feature page describes capturing every key pressed across the entire OS. Their Enterprise tier adds screen-OCR so screenshots can be queried as text.
Northbeams
The browser extension classifies prompts locally inside the
browser via a content script that runs only on recognized AI tool
sites. Only category labels (e.g. credentials, sourceCode),
per-pattern match counts, and a redacted ≤200-character snippet are
transmitted to the dashboard. The desktop app for Mac and PC watches
outbound connection metadata and process names; it never inspects
connection contents and never installs a TLS-interception certificate.
The full architecture and the seven things we deliberately do not
do are documented at /on-device-classification.
Why this matters
Three reasons the mechanism matters even when the visibility outcome looks similar:
- EU works councils. In Germany (Betriebsrat co-determination), France (CNIL guidance), and several other EU jurisdictions, default-on stealth keystroke logging and screen recording typically require works-council agreement and DSAR processes that Teramind does not provide as a self-service feature. Northbeams' metadata-only architecture does not trigger the same review.
- Engineer retention. Engineers who discover keystroke logging on their work laptop tend to leave. Cornell research cited in the State of Surveillance 2026 review finds excessive monitoring decreases productivity and increases quit rates.
- Blast radius. A Teramind compromise leaks every keystroke and every screen recording the agent ever captured. A Northbeams compromise leaks category labels and 200-character redacted snippets. We deliberately don't have the high-value data to lose.
The EFF quote is about the broad category of employee monitoring tools, not Teramind specifically. We include it because the mechanism Teramind uses to catch AI usage (default-on screen + keystroke capture) sits in that category by design.
Where Teramind wins
- Mature endpoint stack. 11 years of agent engineering on Windows, Mac, Linux. Stealth install, kernel hooks, OCR, screen capture, audio recording.
- Breadth of enforcement primitives. Block, redact, kill-process, lock-out user, take screenshot evidence, real-time alert, video forensic export. Northbeams does block and redact; we do not kill processes.
- BPO / contact-center fit. Strong product-market fit in outsourcing and call centers where surveillance is contractually required and morally normalized.
- 200 prepackaged DLP rules in the $32 DLP tier with mature regex and PII / PCI / PHI / source-code classifiers.
- Self-hosted deployment option. Northbeams is cloud-only.
- Audio / call recording for contact-center QA.
Where Northbeams wins
- Metadata-only, on-device classifier. No keystrokes, no screen captures, no prompt content leaves the device. Defensible under EU works-council review and GDPR DPIA in a way Teramind structurally is not.
- MV3 browser extension covering ~700 AI tool sites with structured prompt-level metadata. Teramind sees AI sites only via screen-grab and keystroke replay, which is fragile when the AI tool's UI changes.
- CLI coding-agent coverage (Claude Code, Aider, Cursor) via process and outbound-connection events on Mac and PC. Teramind has no documented CLI-agent SKU.
- MCP Gateway on Sentinel. An in-path proxy for the MCP servers your developers wire up to Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Claude Code. Per-tool allow / warn / block on 10 catalogued servers. Argument values stay on-device. Teramind has no MCP coverage.
- Self-serve, no seat minimum, free trial. Teramind is demo-only with a 5-seat minimum.
- One-click block / sandbox / allow at the AI-tool catalog level, not a security-analyst rule builder. The IT lead can do their job without writing regexes.
- Productized EU AI Act Article 4 evidence pack. Sentinel-tier export plus a public lead-magnet PDF.
- Vanta and Drata one-click integration in our Fleet tier.
- Self-serve and install-by-Monday. Teramind's pricing, deployment friction, and contact-center DNA are tuned for large BPOs with a procurement cycle.
The feature checklist
| Capability | Northbeams | Teramind |
|---|---|---|
| Free trial, no card | 14-day Sentinel | Demo only |
| Free permanent tier | Yes (Beam) | No |
| Seat minimum | None | 5 |
| AI features in entry tier | Yes ($15 Lighthouse) | No (only $28+ UAM tier) |
| Browser MV3 extension catalogue | ~700 tools | Catches AI sites via screen-OCR |
| Mac AI desktop app coverage (Claude Desktop, ChatGPT Desktop, Cursor, Granola) | Yes (process + outbound conn) | Yes (via screen capture) |
| CLI coding-agent coverage (Claude Code, Aider) | Yes | No |
| MCP Gateway (in-path proxy, per-tool rules) | Yes (10 servers, 3 clients, Sentinel-tier) | No |
| Keystroke logging | No (by design) | Yes (default-on) |
| Screen recording / screenshots | No (by design) | Yes |
| Screen-OCR engine | No (by design) | Yes (Enterprise tier) |
| Clipboard interception | No (by design) | Yes |
| Audio / call recording | No (by design) | Yes (contact-center) |
| On-device classifier, no prompt content leaves the device | Yes | No (cloud, post screen-OCR) |
| Productized EU AI Act Article 4 evidence pack | Yes (Sentinel) | Claimed in marketing |
| Vanta / Drata one-click integration | Yes (Fleet) | Not advertised |
| Self-hosted / on-prem option | No | Yes |
| Kill-process / lock-user-out enforcement | No | Yes |
| Insider-threat behavioral analytics | No | Yes |
The green "No" entries on the Northbeams side are deliberate product choices. They are the reason an EU works council, a privacy-conscious engineering team, or a regulator is more likely to say yes to Northbeams than to Teramind.
Which one should you pick?
Pick Teramind if you are a contact-center, BPO, or heavily-outsourced operation where agent screen recording and keystroke logging is contractually expected, your buyer is the COO or VP of Operations rather than the IT lead, and you have an existing budget for forensic evidence in fraud cases.
Pick Northbeams if the question of "what does your AI governance product actually do to my employees' laptops" matters for your works council, your engineering team, your DPIA, or your own conscience. We catch the same AI usage without ever recording a keystroke or capturing a screen.
The two products do not really compete head-to-head in most deals. The buyer who fits Teramind is rarely the buyer we sell to.
Try Northbeams free for 14 days.
Full Sentinel features. No card. No annual contract. No keystrokes. No screen captures. No prompt content.
Sources
- Teramind ChatGPT employee monitoring page ("Record full ChatGPT sessions showing prompts and responses")
- Teramind keystroke recorder feature
- Teramind tiers blog ($14 / $28 / $32, AI features in UAM+)
- Teramind licensing KB (5-seat minimum)
- SiliconANGLE: Teramind launches Agentic AI Governance (Mar 3, 2026)
- EFF: Inside the Invasive, Secretive Bossware Tracking Workers
- State of Surveillance 2026: bossware research summary
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.