Community Sift alternative: replace it before your contract ends

curl

curl -X POST "https://www.paxmod.com/api/v1/text" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $PAXMOD_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "message": "add me on snap, whats ur address",
    "user_id": "player_123",
    "context_id": "lobby_7"
  }'

Node (server side)

const res = await fetch("https://www.paxmod.com/api/v1/text", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.PAXMOD_API_KEY}`,
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({ message: text, user_id: playerId, context_id: roomId }),
});
const data = await res.json();
if (data.status === "error") throw new Error(data.error.code);

if (data.result === "flagged") {
  // Same place your Community Sift "reject" branch lived.
  hideMessage(data.reason);
}

Response

{
  "status": "success",
  "id": "5f0c2a8e-1d9b-4c47-9a51-3c1f6f2b7e10",
  "result": "flagged",
  "reason": "Content flagged for Personally Identifiable Information",
  "content_moderation": {
    "flagged": true,
    "categories": {
      "Personally Identifiable Information": { "flagged": true, "threshold": 0.5, "score": 0.91 },
      "Harassment": { "flagged": false, "threshold": 0.5, "score": 0.03 },
      "Sexual": { "flagged": false, "threshold": 0.5, "score": 0.02 }
    }
  }
}

Is Community Sift shutting down?

Yes. Microsoft has told existing Community Sift customers that their contracts will be honored until they expire and will not be renewed. Microsoft has not announced this publicly, and its product page is still live, but the wind-down has been underway since late 2025.

When does Community Sift stop working?

There is no single public date. Microsoft is handling it customer by customer, so your real deadline is the end of your current contract. Ask your Microsoft account team for the date and plan to be fully migrated a few weeks before it.

Is Community Sift the same as Sift?

No. Community Sift is the content moderation platform Microsoft bought with Two Hat in 2021. Sift (sift.com) is an unrelated fraud prevention company.

What is the best Community Sift alternative for game chat?

If your main surface is text chat and usernames in a game, Paxmod is the closest fit you can start today: a real-time chat moderation API built for Unity, Roblox, Minecraft and Discord, with evasion-resistant text normalization, per-surface policies, PII and grooming-risk detection, and published pricing from $29/month. If you mostly need voice moderation, look at GGWP or Modulate. If you need video, look at Hive or Lasso.

Can Paxmod replace Community Sift's User Reputation system?

Partly, and differently. Send a user_id with every message and Paxmod keeps each player's flag history and builds a per-user risk summary in User Analysis. Studio adds conversation context, so a message is judged against the player's recent messages instead of on its own. Paxmod does not move players between Trusted and Not-Trusted states for you; your game decides the action, using those signals.

Does Paxmod moderate usernames?

Yes. Send the username to the same text endpoint. Most teams use a separate Paxmod project for usernames with stricter thresholds, the same way Community Sift let you set a stricter policy guide for names than for chat.

How much does Paxmod cost compared with Community Sift?

Community Sift has no public price; it was quoted by Microsoft sales. Paxmod is $29/month for 50,000 messages (Indie) or $149/month for 500,000 messages with image moderation and conversation context (Studio). Enterprise, with data residency in Canada or the EU and an SLA, starts at $1,500/month. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial with 10,000 messages and every feature.

How long does a Community Sift migration take?

The code change is usually one function: a new URL, a Bearer header and different response fields. Most of the time goes into recreating your policy guides and running Paxmod next to Community Sift on real traffic to tune thresholds. Start that well before your contract ends.