# Laya vs Kev

> Laya has a score of 69.2 (B) against Kev's 67.4 (B). Both do inference decision. The largest gap is transparency & trust, 13 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-04

Laya has a score of 69.2 (B) against Kev's 67.4 (B). Both do inference decision. The largest gap is transparency & trust, 13 points.

- Laya: grade B, 69.2/100, rank #115 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/convai-laya.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/convai-laya.json
- Kev: grade B, 67.4/100, rank #141 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/jaredpalmer-kev.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/jaredpalmer-kev.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Laya for security & auth (+8), transparency & trust (+13).

Pick Kev for reliability (+8).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Laya | Kev | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 65 | 73 | Kev +8 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 77 | Laya +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 78 | Laya +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 57 | 49 | Laya +8 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 60 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 83 | 83 | even |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 62 | 49 | Laya +13 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **69.2 · B** | **67.4 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Laya | Kev |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Convai Innovations | Jared Palmer |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 (code, adapters and weights) |
| Tools exposed | 8 | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-01 |
| Popularity | 29k stars | none |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Laya.** Apache-2.0 code and weights, installed with `pip install laya`, with Python 3.10 to 3.13 tested in CI. Base checkpoints score 0.362 and 0.352 on the maintainers' typed-decisions benchmark against a 0.318 random baseline, so it needs fine-tuning.

**Kev.** Apache-2.0 code, adapters and heads on Apache-2.0 Qwen bases, with release tarballs and SHA-256 checksums for the 0.8B, 4B and 9B models. No package. `pip install kev` installs an unrelated 2021 ORM, so Kev runs from a Git clone with uv.

## Before you call either

### Laya

1. Set `LAYA_API_KEY` before starting `laya-serve`. It listens on every interface by default
2. Gate on `answer_confidence`, not `confidence`, which measures entropy and doesn't match Jev's field
3. Shortlist choice questions with more than about 20 options using `predict_shortlist` or the `laya_shortlist` tool
4. Use semantic or opaque labels such as `A` and `B`, not `yes` and `no`, in choice questions. The checkpoints can follow the label text
5. Pass `model="multilingual"` and `max_len=8192` for long documents. The English checkpoint stops at 512 tokens

### Kev

1. Install from the repository. The `kev` package on PyPI is an unrelated project
2. Pin a checkpoint with `@v1.0`, as in `jaredpalmer/kev-4b@v1.0`, so tuned thresholds keep their meaning
3. Keep states under 8,192 tokens on Kev-0.8B, 4B and 9B, or use Kev-27B for long documents
4. Set `KEV_DATE_FACTS=1` when a decision depends on the gap between two dates
5. Expect a 422 naming the token count when a state passes 65,536 tokens. The server refuses it instead of cutting it

## Other comparisons with Laya or Kev

- [Clef vs Laya](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-clef-vs-convai-laya.md)
- [Clef vs Kev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-clef-vs-jaredpalmer-kev.md)
- [Laya vs Jev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-typesafe-jev.md)
- [Kev vs Jev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jaredpalmer-kev-vs-typesafe-jev.md)