Dregs vs Trueguard

Trueguard and Dregs both go after fake signups, trial abuse, multi-accounting, and bots on products that need real users. Trueguard is built around the verification event: you send a check, and it returns risk signals, a risk score, a bot score, and a rules decision. Those checks use a durable device ID and the visitor's history, so a repeat signup isn't a blank form. Dregs scores each identity continuously as activity arrives, and prices by account rather than by verification. Both publish their pricing. Here's where each one fits.

At a glance

What Trueguard does well

Trueguard publishes its prices and a free plan, and registration is open at app.trueguard.io/register with no credit card. The integration is a JavaScript snippet plus a backend call. The docs start with @trueguard/trueguard-js opening a verification session in the browser, then your server posts an event to the Event API with that verification ID. The API is described as scoring a signup or a login. The published examples are a registration attempt, before the account exists, and a successful registration.

The signal set is built for fake signups, trial abuse, and multi-accounting. Trueguard lists durable device IDs that survive cookie clears, incognito sessions, and VPN or proxy setups, email intelligence for disposable and low-quality addresses, network analysis for VPNs, proxies, and IP clusters, geolocation, a risk score and a separate bot score, and a rules engine. On the fake account page, those rules can block the registration, require verification, hold it for review, or let it through and flag it, and the decision comes back in the API response. The trial abuse page adds that device history persists across sessions, so a later signup from the same device is still visible. That's a practical fit when the decision has to land on the attempt in front of you.

Trueguard also sells a standalone Email Verification API. As of October 2, 2026 it includes 100 validations a month free, and a Standard plan at $49.99/month for 50,000 validations, then $0.001 per validation. Trueguard describes it as its own product, with the same API key and a separate meter, so a validation isn't a Fraud Prevention verification event.

Where Dregs takes a different approach

Verification events and continuous scoring

Trueguard's Fraud Prevention plans are sized in verification events: 1,000 a month on the free plan, 10,000 on Standard, then $5 per additional 1,000. You open a verification session in the browser and send an event from your backend when you want scores and a rules decision. The check can draw on the device ID and earlier history, so it isn't a blind look at one form, but a later check of the same account is another verification event. The commercial unit is the event.

Dregs prices by active identity instead. An account with at least one tracked event in the billing month counts once, and Dregs keeps scoring the account after the check, on Humanity, Authenticity, Uniqueness, and Behavior, as further events arrive. Badges, escalations, and webhooks follow moments after new activity changes the picture, and you can train the scoring on accounts you already trust. That monthly count is the set of accounts you're watching for abuse, which is a different quantity from a stack of verification events, so the two don't line up one to one. There's more on this distinction on the pricing page.

Scores you can open

Trueguard returns a risk score and a separate bot score, and rules act on the signals you configure. The response answers the event you sent. In Dregs, every score is a standing reading of the account, composed of observations that each carry a value, a confidence, and a plain-English explanation, so you can open a score and see exactly why it moved. False positives are part of fraud detection. Seeing the observation behind a flag is how you keep them from costing you a real customer, and how a team ends up doing less manual review.

The response lives in your application

Trueguard's rules engine ships on every Fraud Prevention plan, and it can answer inside the API response, which is what you want when the signup itself should be blocked, held, or flagged. Dregs raises badges and escalations and calls webhooks, so your application decides whether to step up, limit, or leave the account alone. Custom rules and lists are part of that: badge rules and escalation rules on every plan, and on Advanced your own analyzers and datasets inside the scoring pipeline.

Trueguard pricing vs Dregs pricing

Trueguard pricing facts checked October 2, 2026 against https://trueguard.io/pricing. Dregs pricing is current at dregs.com/pricing. If you spot something out of date, email dregs@dregs.com and we'll correct it.

The two pricing units don't convert: ten thousand verification events aren't ten thousand identities. If you only need a score on the signups and logins you choose to send, Trueguard's Standard plan can be the smaller bill. If every active account should keep a score as it's used, per-identity pricing fits that work better. The $49.99 figure also appears on Trueguard's email verification product, for 50,000 validations rather than 10,000 verification events, so check which plan that price belongs to.

The bottom line

Trueguard is a strong choice when you want a published free plan and a rules decision on the verification events you send, at signup or at a later login, with device history carried into the next attempt. Dregs is the stronger choice when you want continuous, explained scores on the accounts themselves, on a self-serve plan from $17/month with 90 days of history at the entry tier. That's the shape of fake signups, free trial abuse, and duplicate accounts. Comparing another product that meters a check per action? See Dregs vs Rupt.

Frequently Asked Questions