Head to head · LLM inference · October 2026 research run
Cohere Chat API (Command models) vs Tencent Hy4
Cohere Chat API (Command models) scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Tencent Hy4's 64 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Tencent Hy4 leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth. Both do llm inference.
Best model APIs and inference for AI agents · All 1044 models comparisons
Which one, for what
Cohere Chat API (Command models) B
Best for Teams that want Command models for RAG with citations, tool use and multilingual work, and that may later move to a private deployment or Model Vault.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 67 against 46
- Schema & documentation, 84 against 73
- Payments & pricing, 53 against 45
- Transparency & trust, 75 against 52
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card
Watch for
Production keys work like trial keys on Command A+, Reasoning, Translate and Vision. The docs send production use of those models to sales or to Model Vault
Best for Long-context agent work, coding and office or finance tasks on a 1M-token context with images, for teams already on Tencent Cloud or happy to verify an account there.
Ahead on
- Agent ergonomics, 86 against 72
- Security & auth, 71 against 55
Watch for
Weights, licence and system card are promised but not published; tencent/Hy4 didn't answer on Hugging Face on 11 November
Why the edge
Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.
Transparency & trust Cohere Chat API (Command models) +23
Cohere Chat API (Command models) 75
Closed service under a published SaaS agreement, MIT SDKs, and the docs say Command A+ weights are on Hugging Face under Apache 2.0, which we did not open (15 of 30). The Enterprise Data Commitments (5 December 2025) and the privacy policy (1 May 2026) agree on 30-day retention and a training opt-out. The SaaS agreement (8 April 2025) does not mention the opt-out and grants an irrevocable right to use and share API data, and the DPA is sent on request (16 of 30). Deprecations page with dated history back to 2024 and lifecycle terms, no minimum notice, and nothing newer than 4 April 2026 on 2 November, read at 15 as cohere-embed reads the same page (15 of 20). The trust centre names nine sub-processors with a location for each, all in the US, and Google Cloud US-Central as the data location, read at 20 as cohere-embed reads the same list (20 of 20).
Tencent Hy4 52
Model reading for hy4 on Tencent Cloud TokenHub. Platform facts are the tencent-tokenhub listing's (checked 1 November), carried over as RULES.md allows for a model on an already graded platform. Closed service under the TokenHub terms, but Tencent's release headline calls Hy4 open source while the weights and system card are only promised 'in the coming days', with no licence stated, and tencent/Hy4 didn't answer on Hugging Face on 11 November (14 of 30). Terms and FAQ agree inputs aren't used for training; the privacy policy renders only with JavaScript and wasn't read (15 of 30). Dated retirement notices and shutdown fields (13 of 20). Processing generally in mainland China for the China site, Singapore for the international one (13 of 20). Every benchmark in the release is Tencent's own or a partner's. 14 + 15 + 13 + 13 = 55.
Reliability Cohere Chat API (Command models) +21
Cohere Chat API (Command models) 67
Hosted lines. status.cohere.com (incident.io) lists each Command model and the endpoints as components (20). Its feed, read on 2 November 2026, shows two incidents in the 90 days from 4 August. 'Multiple Endpoint Disruptions' on 1 September 2026, from 15:41 to 19:47 UTC, degraded the embeddings endpoint, embed-v4.0, two rerank models and command-a-reasoning-08-2025 during a Google Cloud outage, rated minor and partial, and docs loading failed on 5 August. Nothing has been posted since 1 September, so minor incidents only (20). Chat limits are published per model, 20 requests a minute and 1,000 calls a month on a trial key and 500 a minute on a production key for Command A, R, R+ and R7B, while the four newest variants say contact sales (12 of 15). The errors page documents 429 with example messages that say to wait and try again later and links to the rate limits, with no Retry-After header, backoff timing or idempotency key, the reading cohere-embed takes of the same page (8 of 15). cohere.com/slo is titled Service Level Objective and its text is script-drawn, so it was unread and scores as absent (0). The v2 chat endpoint is the default docs version, but the sample response on the chat guide still carries is_experimental and the newest models are not open to production keys (7 of 10).
Tencent Hy4 46
Model reading for hy4 on Tencent Cloud TokenHub. Platform facts are the tencent-tokenhub listing's (checked 1 November), carried over as RULES.md allows for a model on an already graded platform. No public status page (0) and so no incident record to read (5 of 30). Per-model rate limits only in the console and DescribeModelQuota (8 of 15). Six 429 codes, Retry-After and backoff advice (13 of 15). The TokenHub SLA promises 99.5% a month, and Hy4 is Tencent's own model, so the third-party exclusion doesn't apply (10). Released as hy4 on 4 November, a separate id from hy4-preview, with no preview label (10). 0 + 5 + 8 + 13 + 10 + 10 = 46.
Security & auth Tencent Hy4 +16
Cohere Chat API (Command models) 55
Model reading. Bearer keys of two kinds, trial and production. Team roles are Owner and User, only Owners delete production keys, and a production key is shown in full once. No scopes, expiry or per-model restriction was found (18 of 30). Paying customers can switch training off under Data Controls, which implies it is on until they do, trial keys fall under the website terms, and the SaaS agreement grants an irrevocable right to use API data to improve the services and share it with third parties (8 of 20). Logged prompts and generations are deleted after 30 days unless flagged, and zero data retention needs approval (12 of 15). The dashboard shows usage history, and no customer audit log was found (2 of 15). The trust centre lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, UK Cyber Essentials, penetration tests on request and a responsible disclosure policy with a bug bounty, per the 9 October check. cohere.com/.well-known/security.txt still answers 404 on 2 November and no public advisories were found, so the line takes 15, as cohere-embed and cohere-north read the same programme (15 of 20).
Tencent Hy4 71
Model reading for hy4 on Tencent Cloud TokenHub. Platform facts are the tencent-tokenhub listing's (checked 1 November), carried over as RULES.md allows for a model on an already graded platform. Bearer keys limited by model, service, IP range and token quota, long-lived with no rotation (26 of 30). The terms say inputs aren't used to train Tencent Cloud's own models, and Hy4 is first party, so no third party's terms apply (14 of 20). Retention only as long as the service needs, no periods (7 of 15). Per-call audit logs and optional full logs to the customer's CLS (14 of 15). No security.txt; Tencent's TSRC bounty covers Tencent Cloud; no certification checked (10 of 20). 26 + 14 + 7 + 14 + 10 = 71.
Agent ergonomics Tencent Hy4 +14
Cohere Chat API (Command models) 72
Model reading. Function calling with tool_choice REQUIRED or NONE and strict_tools, which the reference marks beta (17 of 20). response_format takes json_object or a JSON Schema, with limits documented and no support in RAG mode (13 of 15). The usage object reports cached_tokens, and no guide or price for prompt caching was found (5 of 15). Context is 256,000 tokens on Command A and Command A Reasoning and 128,000 on Command A+ (10 of 15). /v2/batches runs a batch from an uploaded dataset, with no price or discount found (6 of 10). Official SDKs for Python, TypeScript, Java and Go (10). Error messages are specific and readable, with no stable error codes (11 of 15).
Tencent Hy4 86
Model reading for hy4 on Tencent Cloud TokenHub. Platform facts are the tencent-tokenhub listing's (checked 1 November), carried over as RULES.md allows for a model on an already graded platform. Function calling is marked for hy4 in the model list (18 of 20). Structured output marked (13 of 15). Cache-hit price published, ¥0.3 against ¥6 input (14 of 15). 1M-token context with 960K input and 64K output (15). Batch at half price covered Hy3 and Hy4 preview on 1 November; whether it covers hy4 wasn't re-read (3 of 10). OpenAI and Anthropic SDKs with a changed base URL, plus Tencent Cloud's SDK and CLI for the control plane (8 of 10). Errors with code, messages, upstream status and request ID (15 of 15). 18 + 13 + 14 + 15 + 3 + 8 + 15 = 86.
Schema & documentation Cohere Chat API (Command models) +11
Cohere Chat API (Command models) 84
Model reading. Public OpenAPI 3.1 file cohere-openapi.yaml in cohere-ai/cohere-developer-experience, 43 operations, last changed 29 September 2026 (25). docs.cohere.com/llms.txt and a Markdown twin of every page by adding .md, though the llms.txt files list no pages (8 of 10). The v2 chat operation describes each of its 21 request fields with defaults and limits, and says less about when to prefer one option (16 of 20). Enums on tool_choice, safety_mode and thinking.type, numeric bounds on temperature, k, p and priority, with penalties bounded only in prose (12 of 15). Eight request examples on the operation and an errors page with sample messages for each status code, with error bodies carrying a message and no machine code (12 of 15). v1 and v2 live side by side in the path and the changelog is dated, but the OpenAPI file is version 1.0 throughout and its changes are committed as 'Add spec changes' with no per-change note (11 of 15).
Tencent Hy4 73
Model reading for hy4 on Tencent Cloud TokenHub. Platform facts are the tencent-tokenhub listing's (checked 1 November), carried over as RULES.md allows for a model on an already graded platform. No OpenAPI file for inference; field pages for the OpenAI and Anthropic formats as TokenHub implements them (12 of 25). llms.txt with Markdown copies (10). The model list, updated 9 November, gives hy4's context, input and output limits and marks thinking, structured output, function calling, caching and image understanding; computer use, which Tencent's release names, isn't marked (13 of 20). Typed field pages (10 of 15). Examples in five languages and an error page of 30 codes (14 of 15). Dated release notes, with hy4 added on 4 November (14 of 15). 12 + 10 + 13 + 10 + 14 + 14 = 73.
Payments & pricing Cohere Chat API (Command models) +8
Cohere Chat API (Command models) 53
No x402, MPP or L402 in the docs, the OpenAPI file or the pricing page (0). The docs say Command models are billed per input and output token. The pricing page, read on 2 November 2026, now carries per-unit prices in its own page data, Command R at $0.15 input and $0.60 output and Command R7B at $0.0375 and $0.15 per million tokens, with Command R+ 08-2024 at $2.50 and $10.00 among legacy prices and Command A+ shown as free. No price is published for Command A, Reasoning, Vision or Translate, so the line takes 15 rather than the full 20 (15 of 20). A trial key is created at sign-up and is free with no card (20). Sign-up is in a browser, and a production key needs an Owner to complete a Go to Production form (0). Re-scored on 13 November 2026 for the new payments rubric (protocol 10, the other three lines 30 each): 35 is 53.
Tencent Hy4 45
Model reading for hy4 on Tencent Cloud TokenHub. Platform facts are the tencent-tokenhub listing's (checked 1 November), carried over as RULES.md allows for a model on an already graded platform. No machine payment protocol (0). The price page, updated 9 November, lists ¥6 input, ¥0.3 cached and ¥18 output per million tokens, with Hy4 billed at 50% until 31 December 2026 (20). TokenHub's campaign of 1M free tokens per language model, read on 1 November, isn't confirmed for hy4 on the price page, so half (10 of 20, a judgement call). A person signs up with real-name verification (0). 0 + 20 + 10 + 0 = 30. Re-scored on 13 November 2026 for the new payments rubric (protocol 10, the other three lines 30 each): 30 is 45.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Cohere Chat API (Command models) | Tencent Hy4 | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 67 | 46 | Cohere Chat API (Command models) +21 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 84 | 73 | Cohere Chat API (Command models) +11 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 72 | 86 | Tencent Hy4 +14 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 55 | 71 | Tencent Hy4 +16 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 53 | 45 | Cohere Chat API (Command models) +8 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 72 | 73 | Tencent Hy4 +1 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 75 | 52 | Cohere Chat API (Command models) +23 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | B 67.9/100 | B 64/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Cohere Chat API (Command models) | Tencent Hy4 |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Cohere | Tencent (Hy team) |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.cohere.com/v2/chat | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Cohere's Commercial SaaS Agreement. The SDKs are MIT | Hosted model under the Tencent Cloud TokenHub terms. Tencent says weights and a system card will follow; no licence is stated yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-09 | 2026-11-04 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-04-08 | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-01 | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models | yes | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | none |
How the scores have moved
Verdicts
Cohere Chat API (Command models)
A public OpenAPI file, Markdown twins of every docs page and SDKs in four languages make the Chat API easy for an agent to read. Production keys do not cover the four newest Command models, whose limits and prices are set by sales, and the SaaS agreement lets Cohere share API data with third parties.
Tencent Hy4
Tencent's flagship model is on TokenHub as hy4, with a 1M-token context, image understanding, function calling and caching, at ¥6 input and ¥18 output per million tokens, half price until the end of 2026. The weights it is called open source for aren't published yet, and every benchmark is Tencent's own.
Before you call either
Cohere Chat API (Command models)
- Call
POST https://api.cohere.com/v2/chatwithAuthorization: bearer <key>.modelandmessagesare the only required fields - Use
command-a-03-2025,command-r-08-2024,command-r-plus-08-2024orcommand-r7b-12-2024for production traffic. Newer variants stay at trial limits on a production key, and only the R models have published prices - Keep a trial key under 20 chat requests a minute and 1,000 calls a month, and do not use it for commercial work
- Set
response_formatwith ajson_schemafor structured output, and tell the model to produce JSON when usingjson_objectwithout a schema - Ask the account Owner to turn off training under Data Controls in the dashboard before sending confidential prompts
Tencent Hy4
- Use model id hy4 on TokenHub's OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible endpoints; hy4-preview is a separate, older model
- Keep input under 960K tokens and expect at most 64K output
- Reuse prompt prefixes: cached input is ¥0.3 against ¥6
- Check the price page for the end of the 50% discount on 31 December 2026 before budgeting
- Read rate limits from the console or DescribeModelQuota; the public docs don't give them for chat models
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Cohere Chat API (Command models) or Tencent Hy4?
Cohere Chat API (Command models) scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Tencent Hy4's 64 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Tencent Hy4 leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth.
Do Cohere Chat API (Command models) and Tencent Hy4 need an API key?
Both need an API key.
Can an agent call Cohere Chat API (Command models) and Tencent Hy4 without installing anything?
Cohere Chat API (Command models) has a hosted endpoint at https://api.cohere.com/v2/chat. No hosted endpoint is listed for Tencent Hy4.
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/cohere-chat-vs-hy4.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/cohere-chat.json·/api/v1/tools/hy4.json - From a terminal
anchor compare cohere-chat hy4(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "cohere-chat", "b": "hy4"}at/mcp, no key