# Consus vs Ask Sage for Defense Contractors

November 5, 2026 · Eric Magliarditi

Canonical: https://consus.io/blog/consus-vs-ask-sage

> Consus Gateway vs Ask Sage for defense contractors handling ITAR and CUI, compared on data handling, tools, pricing, ITAR routing, and who each is built for.

Almost every contractor we talk to asks some version of the same question: "How are you different from Ask Sage?" It is a fair question. Both companies exist because defense teams want frontier AI and cannot send controlled data to commercial endpoints. But we made very different bets about what a defense contractor actually needs, and for most contractors handling ITAR and CUI, I think ours is the right one. Here is how the two compare, so you can judge for yourself.

## Two different bets

Ask Sage is a generative AI workspace. Users log into a chat interface, pick from 150+ models, upload documents into datasets, build agents and plugins, and control access with data labels. It was founded by Nicolas Chaillan, the former Chief Software Officer of the U.S. Air Force, received a [DISA IL5 provisional authorization](https://www.asksage.ai/press-releases/ask-sage-achieves-il5-authorization) in October 2024, and markets itself as FedRAMP High and DoW IL5/IL6 authorized.

[Consus Gateway](https://gateway.consus.io/overview) is not a workspace. It is the compliant inference layer underneath the tools your team already uses. Your engineers keep Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Cline, or their own code on the OpenAI and Anthropic SDKs. Your broader staff can use Claude Desktop and ChatGPT. Every request goes to frontier models served from AWS GovCloud, Azure Government, or GCP Assured Workloads, and nothing in the prompt or the response is ever stored.

Ask Sage sells a destination. Consus sells a pipe. That one decision drives everything below.

## 1. We never hold your data

A workspace has to store things to be useful. Ask Sage keeps your datasets, your agents, and embeddings of the documents you upload in its own vector database; its [FAQ](https://docs.asksage.ai/faq/) says the database holding CUI is hosted in Azure Government at IL5. That storage is inside Ask Sage's authorized boundary, and it is well protected. It is also a copy of your controlled data that lives with a vendor, for as long as you keep using them.

Consus keeps no copy. Prompts and responses exist only in memory while a request is in flight, and every model provider on every route is configured for zero data retention. We keep operational metadata only, such as the model, token counts, and timestamps. There are no prompts or completions on our side to breach, subpoena, or train on, and nothing to migrate or purge when a program ends.

## 2. Your team keeps the tools it already likes

Ask Sage has added integrations for coding tools like Claude Code and Codex, and that is useful. But the center of the product is still the Ask Sage workspace, its datasets, and its token currency.

With Consus there is nothing new to learn. An engineer changes three settings in the tool they already have open: the base URL, the API key, and the model ID. On Enterprise, your IT team pushes ready-made packages for Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, Claude Code, and Codex through Jamf, Kandji, Intune, or Group Policy, and your identity provider's groups decide which models each team can call. Most customers send their first request the day the contract is signed.

## 3. You pay for tokens, not a platform currency

Ask Sage prices usage in "Ask Sage tokens," a platform unit rather than the model provider's tokens. Each user gets a [monthly allotment](https://docs.asksage.ai/subscription-management/payment/), from 200K on the Starter tier to 5M on Ultimate; the 2M-token Power User tier starts at $90 per month. There is no overage purchase. When a user runs out, they upgrade a tier or their requests to paid models stop until the monthly reset. Enterprise pricing is [quoted per agreement](https://docs.asksage.ai/asksage-sales/), and a [dedicated enclave](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-bnnian7jufqbm) on your own cloud tenant is $120,000 per year before token and hosting costs.

That model fits occasional chat well. It is a harder fit for the work that matters most right now: engineers running coding agents, which can burn through millions of tokens in a day. A monthly cap that stops an engineer mid-sprint is not a compliance problem. It is an adoption problem.

Consus bills every model at the provider's list price with no markup, and there is no platform allotment. You set the spend caps, so you decide how much headroom an engineer gets. Teams under 50 employees with ITAR-only workloads pay $40 per employee per month; teams with CUI, or with 50 or more employees, move to an Enterprise agreement. In practice, an engineer on agentic workflows runs roughly $150 to $600 a month in tokens, and a chat-only user $10 to $60. The [pricing page](https://consus.io/pricing) has an estimator.

## 4. ITAR is in the request, not the brochure

ITAR is not a certification, so the real question is mechanical: when an engineer sends export-controlled technical data, what guarantees it lands on an ITAR-eligible path?

At Consus, the answer is in the model ID. A request for `claude-sonnet-4-5:itar` goes to an ITAR-authorized serving path and nowhere else. A request with no compliance level is rejected before it reaches any model. There is no default and no fallback. We check every model against each cloud provider's authorization, so models without an ITAR-scoped serving path, like Gemini, are simply not offered for ITAR. The [models page](https://gateway.consus.io/models) shows what is available at each level.

Ask Sage's public materials focus on its FedRAMP and IL authorizations and don't say which of its models are served from an ITAR-eligible path. If ITAR is your gating question, that is the thing to ask any vendor to show you.

## 5. Built for contractors, not alongside agencies

Ask Sage's center of gravity is government. BigBear.ai reports more than 100,000 users across 16,000 government teams, the U.S. Army runs its enterprise LLM workspace on Ask Sage, and its marquee deal is a [$10M first-year partnership](https://www.asksage.ai/?p=5254) with the DoD CDAO and the Army. It is now part of BigBear.ai, a public company serving government customers.

Consus serves one kind of customer: US-based defense contractors. Every customer goes through a company review before getting access. Our compliance work is aimed at your CMMC assessment, not an agency ATO. When you need something, you hear from the people who built it, not a ticket queue.

## What about compliance?

Both products take compliance seriously, and they prove it differently.

Ask Sage holds its own platform authorizations: FedRAMP High and IL5, with IL6 and Top Secret deployments. If your contract specifically requires a FedRAMP-authorized offering or anything above IL5, that matters.

For a contractor's CMMC assessment, the bar is different. DFARS 252.204-7012 requires any cloud that handles your CUI to meet the FedRAMP Moderate baseline or its equivalent. Consus is FedRAMP Equivalent, assessed at High: our 3PAO [tested Consus against all 410 FedRAMP High controls](/blog/fedramp-high-audit-complete), 87 more than the Moderate equivalency DFARS requires, and we have completed a SOC 2 Type II audit. Consus runs on cloud infrastructure that is already FedRAMP High and IL5 authorized, all cryptography runs on FIPS 140 validated modules, and the Body of Evidence goes straight into your CMMC package. Because Consus never stores content, there is far less in that package to explain. The [security page](https://gateway.consus.io/security) has the data flow diagram your compliance lead will ask for.

## Side by side

| | Ask Sage | Consus Gateway |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Generative AI workspace (chat, agents, datasets, plugins) | Compliant inference layer under the tools you already use |
| Your content | Datasets, agents, and document embeddings stored in Ask Sage's boundary | Never stored; zero data retention with every model provider |
| How your team uses it | Ask Sage workspace, plus integrations | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Cline, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, OpenAI and Anthropic SDKs |
| Pricing | Proprietary "Ask Sage tokens" with per-user monthly caps and no overage | Provider list price, no markup; spend caps you set |
| ITAR | Not specified per model in public materials | Explicit `:itar` routing per model; requests without a compliance level are rejected |
| Compliance evidence | FedRAMP High and IL5/IL6 platform authorizations | FedRAMP Equivalent, assessed at High by a 3PAO; SOC 2 Type II |
| Built for | Government teams first | US defense contractors only |
| Rollout | Per-user seats in the Ask Sage workspace | Company-wide in under a day on Enterprise: packages through your MDM, model access from your identity provider's groups |

## When Ask Sage is the right call

Two cases. If you need classified or IL6 work, air-gapped installs, or on-prem deployment, Ask Sage offers them and Consus does not; we are a cloud service and stop at the IL5 level our clouds are authorized for. And if your people already have Ask Sage seats through an Army or CDAO agreement, use what you already have.

## Bottom line

If the question is "what platform should our program office standardize on," Ask Sage is a reasonable answer. But that is rarely the question a defense contractor is asking. The question is "how do our engineers use Claude and GPT on ITAR and CUI work today, in the tools they already have, without anyone keeping a copy and on a budget you set rather than a vendor's token allowance." That is the question Consus was built to answer.

[Request access](https://consus.io) to see the evidence. Access is reserved for US-based defense contractors and follows a company review and contract.