Omnilert vs ZeroEyes AI Gun Detection Compared on Verification, SAFETY Act Status, and Cost
These are the two AI gun detection vendors holding full DHS SAFETY Act Designation, and they are the pair buyers most often shortlist against each other. Neither publishes an accuracy percentage, which means you cannot decide between them on detection numbers no matter how many comparison charts claim otherwise. This works only from each vendor's own materials and the public record. We sell a competing product, so every claim below is attributed and the table concedes where each of them beats us.
Omnilert or ZeroEyes: Which One Fits
ZeroEyes and Omnilert both run AI on your existing IP cameras to spot a visible firearm before shots are fired, and both hold full DHS SAFETY Act Designation. The real difference is not detection, it is who does the verifying and what happens next. ZeroEyes routes every detection through its own operations center, staffed around the clock by US military and law enforcement veterans, and sells firearm detection as its single product. Omnilert lets you verify in your own security operations center or buy verification from its monitoring centers, and it connects detection to the mass notification, lockdown, and digital signage tooling it built its business on before it ever did gun detection.
So the choice comes down to a staffing question. If you have no security operations center and no appetite to build one, ZeroEyes hands you a fully outsourced verification layer and that is the strongest argument for it. If you already run a staffed SOC or a dispatch desk, and what you actually lack is a way to turn a confirmed threat into a building-wide lockdown and notification in seconds, Omnilert covers more of that chain from a single vendor. Neither publishes a per-camera price and both quote per deployment.
- Choose ZeroEyes if
- Nobody on your team can watch alerts 24/7 and you want verification fully outsourced.
- Choose Omnilert if
- You need detection plus mass notification and lockdown from one contract.
- Choose neither if
- Guns are one risk among many and you also need intrusion, vehicles, plates, and search.
Neither Omnilert nor ZeroEyes Publishes an Accuracy Rate
Every "Omnilert vs ZeroEyes" chart online eventually reaches a row labeled accuracy, and fills it with a percentage. Check the vendors and the row is empty on both sides. ZeroEyes publishes no accuracy figure and no false positive rate; its own FAQ says false positives "vary greatly depending on human activity in camera view," which is an honest answer and not a number. Omnilert publishes no percentage either. What Omnilert publishes is speed: the AI identifies a gun threat "in fractions of a second," it offers "sub-second detection of potential gun threats," and it describes reaching "a high degree of confidence."
That absence is deliberate on both sides, and it is defensible. Detection rate on a camera is not a property of the model alone, it is a property of the model plus your lens, resolution, mounting height, distance, and lighting. A vendor that prints 99% is printing a lab result from footage that is nothing like your parking garage at dusk. The two vendors in this category who do print numbers give you narrower claims than the headline suggests: Actuate says it classifies guns at a 99% accuracy rate specifically when a firearm is brandished for five seconds, and Scylla cites a probability of detection exceeding 96% from US Army field testing at roughly 15 metres on standard Full HD.
The practical consequence is that a percentage cannot be your selection criterion here. What you can compare is verification model, response tooling, integration surface, contract shape, and what each vendor will commit to in a paid pilot on your worst cameras. Ask both to run on the same ten feeds for thirty days and count what each one caught and what it woke you up for at 3 a.m. That number is yours and it is the only one that describes your site.
- An accuracy percentage for Omnilert. It does not publish one.
- An accuracy percentage for ZeroEyes. It does not publish one.
- A per-camera price for either. Both quote per deployment.
- Detection-speed figures attributed to ZeroEyes from integrator blogs. They are not the vendor's.
Omnilert vs ZeroEyes vs Surveillant, Side by Side
Sourced from each vendor's public materials as of July 2026. Rows where a competitor beats us are marked as such, because a comparison that never concedes anything is a brochure.
| Dimension | Omnilert | ZeroEyes | Surveillant (us) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Published accuracy rate | None published | None published | None published. We will not print one either. |
| What it detects | Visible handguns and long guns near a body | Visible pistols and rifles | Visible firearms, plus people, vehicles, plates, intrusion, loitering |
| Concealed weapons | No | No, stated explicitly in its FAQ | No. Nobody in this category can. |
| Verification | Your SOC, or Omnilert monitoring centers | ZeroEyes Operations Center, veterans, 24/7/365 | Your team. No monitoring service. ZeroEyes wins here. |
| DHS SAFETY Act | Full Designation, March 27, 2025 | Full Designation, announced October 16, 2024, first in category | None. Both of them beat us on this. |
| Mass notification and lockdown | Yes, its original business: SMS, PA, signage, lockdown | Situational awareness and dispatch workflow | No. Omnilert wins here. |
| Facial recognition | No, weapons only by design | No, stated explicitly | No |
| Runs on existing cameras | Yes, standard video feeds, no camera replacement | Yes, existing IP cameras | Yes, any ONVIF or RTSP camera |
| Named integrations | Action-CS, Axis, Genetec, Hirsch | Integrator and VMS partners, not a published list | ONVIF, RTSP, common NVRs, webhooks, API |
| Hardware option | Gun Detect Appliance, $1,500, up to 55 streams at 1080p | Not published | None needed |
| Published price | No per-stream rate published | No price published | Yes: $39 to $42 per camera per month, free plan for one camera |
| Scope beyond guns | Response and notification layer | Expanding into broader analytics | Full analytics platform, guns are one alert type |
| Best fit | Campuses needing detection plus the response chain | Sites with no staff to verify alerts | Teams wanting many alert types on cameras they own |
Omnilert and ZeroEyes are trademarks of their respective owners. This comparison is independent and reflects public materials at the time of writing. Pricing and product scope change, so verify with each vendor before you buy.
How ZeroEyes Works
ZeroEyes is software-only and runs on the IP cameras a site already owns. The model looks for visible pistols and rifles. It does not use facial recognition and says so plainly, which matters in school districts and public agencies where biometric surveillance is a political problem before it is a technical one.
The part that defines ZeroEyes is what happens after a detection. Rather than pushing an alert to your phone, the image goes to the ZeroEyes Operations Center, staffed 24/7/365 by US military and law enforcement veterans, who look at the frame and decide whether it is a firearm. Only verified detections reach your staff and local dispatch. You are buying a human verification service with a detection model attached, and that is a genuinely different product from software you install and then have to watch.
ZeroEyes was the first AI visual detection technology to receive full DHS SAFETY Act Designation, announced October 16, 2024, having previously held a Developmental Testing and Evaluation Designation. On false positives, its own FAQ declines to give a rate and says they vary greatly depending on human activity in camera view. It states directly that it does not detect concealed or holstered weapons. There is no published price.
Longer breakdown: our ZeroEyes weapons detection review and what ZeroEyes costs.
How Omnilert Works
Omnilert Gun Detect also runs on standard video feeds from existing IP cameras with no camera replacement. It detects visible handguns and long guns in proximity to the body, and it says it focuses exclusively on identifying weapons rather than recognizing faces. Technically it reads multiple frames in sequence to build a track rather than judging a single still, and phones and tools are trained as inert objects to hold down nuisance alerts.
Omnilert's published timeline runs roughly like this: the gun is identified in about a second, an alert reaches security in one to three seconds, and monitoring staff verify and initiate response in three to ten seconds. Verification can happen in your own security operations center or in one of Omnilert's monitoring centers. From there the response layer takes over, and this is the half of the product Omnilert has been building longest: SMS and desktop alerts, public address, digital signage, lockdown triggers, and dispatch. Named integration partners include Action-CS, Axis, Genetec, and Hirsch.
Omnilert received full SAFETY Act Designation on March 27, 2025 and appears on the DHS Approved Technologies List. On cost it is more forthcoming than most: it has published a $1,500 Gun Detect Appliance handling up to 55 streams at 1080p, and has said a complete system to secure a small installation would cost less than $10,000. The per-stream software rate is still not published.
Longer breakdown: our Omnilert gun detection review and what Omnilert costs.
What Their Credentials Actually Certify
Both vendors lead with credentials, and buyers routinely read them as accuracy proof. They are not. Here is what each one really covers.
DHS SAFETY Act Designation
A liability protection framework created after 2001 for anti-terrorism technologies. Full Designation limits third-party claims against the vendor and its customers arising from an act of terrorism when the technology is in use. It follows review and testing, so it is not nothing, but it is not a published performance benchmark and it does not state a detection rate. In procurement, especially K-12 and public sector, it is genuinely valuable, and both of these vendors hold it while most of the category does not.
TMA Five Diamond monitoring
An annual designation from The Monitoring Association for central stations, held by fewer than 5% of providers. It requires random inspections by a nationally recognized testing lab, 100% of the center operators certified through TMA training and recertified every three years, demonstrated proficiency in alarm confirmation and communication with PSAPs, knowledge of UL, FM and NFPA codes, and a commitment to reducing false dispatches. It certifies the monitoring center and its people. It says nothing about a detection algorithm.
Veteran-staffed operations center
ZeroEyes staffs its operations center with US military and law enforcement veterans and treats that as a core differentiator. It is a statement about who reviews the frame, not about how often the model flags the frame in the first place. It is a real operational advantage if you have nobody to verify alerts, and worth nothing to you if you already run a 24/7 SOC.
What Either One Costs in Practice
Neither vendor publishes a rate card, so the only honest guide is what public bodies have actually signed. Across AI gun detection contracts on the public record, the per-camera cost falls sharply as camera count rises: East Union in Iowa landed near $592 per camera per year across 38 cameras, Mount Pulaski in Illinois near $330 per camera per year across 116, and Park City in Utah and Iberville in Louisiana near $168 per camera per year at 650 to 800 cameras.
That curve is the single most useful thing to take into a negotiation. If you are quoted a small-deployment rate for a large deployment, you now have public comparables to push back with. It also means a small site should expect gun detection to be expensive per camera, and should ask whether a broader analytics platform covering more risks is a better use of the same budget.
Our own pricing makes that point against us: at $39 per camera per month, roughly $468 per camera per year, we cost more per camera than a large gun detection contract. What you get for it is every other alert type on the same feed. If firearms are genuinely your only concern and you are buying hundreds of cameras, a dedicated vendor is likely cheaper.
| Deployment | Cameras | Approx. per camera |
|---|---|---|
| East Union, IA | 38 | $592 / yr |
| Mount Pulaski, IL | 116 | $330 / yr |
| Park City, UT | 650 to 800 | $168 / yr |
| Iberville, LA | 650 to 800 | $168 / yr |
| Surveillant | Any | $468 to $504 / yr |
Public contract figures, rounded. Vendor identity varies by contract and these are not all the same supplier. Use them as a cost curve, not as a quote.
Omnilert vs ZeroEyes: Common Questions
Which is better, Omnilert or ZeroEyes?
Neither is better across the board, and neither publishes an accuracy rate you could use to decide. ZeroEyes is better if you have nobody to verify alerts, because its operations center does that for you around the clock. Omnilert is better if you already have staff who can verify and what you need is the lockdown, public address, and mass notification chain from the same vendor.
Is ZeroEyes more accurate than Omnilert?
There is no published basis for that claim in either direction. ZeroEyes publishes no accuracy percentage and its FAQ says false positives vary greatly with human activity in camera view. Omnilert publishes no percentage either and describes speed instead, identifying a threat in fractions of a second. Any comparison chart showing accuracy numbers for both is using figures the vendors never published.
Do both Omnilert and ZeroEyes have SAFETY Act designation?
Yes, and they are the only two in this category that do. ZeroEyes announced full DHS SAFETY Act Designation on October 16, 2024, having previously held a Developmental Testing and Evaluation Designation. Omnilert received full Designation on March 27, 2025 and appears on the Approved Technologies List. It is liability protection for the vendor and its customers, not a performance benchmark.
Can Omnilert or ZeroEyes detect concealed weapons?
No. Both detect visible firearms only, and ZeroEyes states in its FAQ that it does not detect concealed or holstered weapons. A gun in a bag, waistband, or under a coat gives a camera nothing to recognize. This limit applies to every camera-based vendor including Actuate, Scylla, and us. Concealed detection requires physical screening at a controlled entrance.
How much do Omnilert and ZeroEyes cost?
Neither publishes a per-camera rate. Omnilert has published a $1,500 Gun Detect Appliance covering up to 55 streams at 1080p and has said a small complete installation would run under $10,000. Signed public contracts for AI gun detection fall from roughly $592 per camera per year at 38 cameras to about $168 at 650 to 800 cameras, which is the curve to negotiate against.
Does ZeroEyes use facial recognition?
No. ZeroEyes states directly that it does not use facial recognition, and Omnilert says it focuses exclusively on identifying weapons rather than recognizing faces. Both positions are deliberate, because biometric surveillance is restricted or politically contested in many school districts and municipalities, and avoiding it removes an objection that can stall a purchase entirely.
Do Omnilert and ZeroEyes work with existing cameras?
Yes, both are software that runs on IP cameras you already own, with no camera replacement required. Omnilert says it operates on standard video feeds. Detection quality still depends on resolution, mounting height, distance, and lighting, so the honest test is a pilot on your worst cameras rather than a demo on the vendor footage.
What is the difference between gun detection and gunshot detection?
Gun detection is visual and proactive: a camera sees a firearm before it is fired. Gunshot detection is acoustic and reactive: microphones classify the sound after a round is fired, it works outdoors, and it tells you where shots came from. Omnilert and ZeroEyes are both in the first category. They are complements, not substitutes.
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Test It on Your Own Cameras Before You Sit Through a Demo
Surveillant runs weapon, person, vehicle, intrusion, and license plate detection on the ONVIF and RTSP cameras you already own, at a published $39 to $42 per camera per month, with a free plan for one camera.
Works with the IP cameras you already own. No credit card required to start.