Head to head · Inference decision · October 2026 research run
Laya vs OpenAI Decisions API
OpenAI Decisions API scores 71.5 (BB) on agent readiness against Laya's 69.2 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Laya leads on reliability, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do inference decision.
Which one, for what
Laya B
Good for Fast, cheap classification and routing on short text in many languages, as a base to fine-tune on your own labels, and as an MCP or LangGraph routing step.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 65 against 53
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 83 against 77
Also in its favour
- No key needed to call it
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source
Watch for
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
Good for High-volume yes or no checks, routing among fixed options and rubric scoring over text and images, for teams already on an OpenAI key.
Ahead on
- Schema & documentation, 89 against 80
- Agent ergonomics, 87 against 80
- Security & auth, 83 against 57
- Transparency & trust, 83 against 62
Also in its favour
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
Watch for
Public beta released on 6 October 2026. The guide expects general availability in the coming weeks and gives no date
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Laya | OpenAI Decisions API | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 65 | 53 | Laya +12 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 80 | 89 | OpenAI Decisions API +9 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 80 | 87 | OpenAI Decisions API +7 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 57 | 83 | OpenAI Decisions API +26 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 30 | Laya +30 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 83 | 77 | Laya +6 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 62 | 83 | OpenAI Decisions API +21 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 69.2 · B | 71.5 · BB |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Laya | OpenAI Decisions API |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Convai Innovations | OpenAI |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://api.openai.com/v1/decisions |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Pay per use |
| Price for inference decision | free | $0.10 per 1M tokens |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary service under OpenAI's services agreement. The official SDKs are Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | 8 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-06 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | |
| Popularity | 29k stars | 32k stars |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | none |
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.
OpenAI Decisions API
Typed predicate, choice and score answers with probabilities, up to 200 questions a call, at $0.10 per million input tokens with no output charge. It is a public beta released on 6 October 2026, with one model alias, no dated snapshot, no Batch route and no SLA found.
Before you call either
Laya
- Set
LAYA_API_KEYbefore startinglaya-serve. It listens on every interface by default - Gate on
answer_confidence, notconfidence, which measures entropy and doesn't match Jev's field - Shortlist choice questions with more than about 20 options using
predict_shortlistor thelaya_shortlisttool - Use semantic or opaque labels such as
AandB, notyesandno, in choice questions. The checkpoints can follow the label text - Pass
model="multilingual"andmax_len=8192for long documents. The English checkpoint stops at 512 tokens
OpenAI Decisions API
- Put independent questions about one input in a single
questionsarray. Send a separate request when a question depends on an earlier answer - Check each answer's
typebefore reading it. A question can come back asrefusalwhile the others in the same request are answered - Encode images as base64 data URLs. Hosted URLs and
file_idinputs are rejected - Give a
choicequestion a fallback value such asother, and set thresholds from your own labelled examples - Use Python SDK 3.26.0 or JavaScript 7.30.0 or later, and follow
Retry-Afteron 429 and 503
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Laya or OpenAI Decisions API?
OpenAI Decisions API scores 71.5 (BB) on agent readiness against Laya's 69.2 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Laya leads on reliability, payments & pricing and maintenance & community.
Which is cheaper for inference decision, Laya or OpenAI Decisions API?
Laya, at free against $0.10 per 1M tokens for OpenAI Decisions API. These are the vendors' published prices for the job.
Do Laya and OpenAI Decisions API need an API key?
Laya needs no key. OpenAI Decisions API needs an API key.
Can an agent call Laya and OpenAI Decisions API without installing anything?
Laya runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. OpenAI Decisions API has a hosted endpoint at https://api.openai.com/v1/decisions.
Are Laya and OpenAI Decisions API open source?
Laya is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for OpenAI Decisions API.
Other comparisons with Laya or OpenAI Decisions API
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/convai-laya-vs-openai-decisions-api.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/convai-laya.json·/api/v1/tools/openai-decisions-api.json - From a terminal
anchor compare convai-laya openai-decisions-api(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "convai-laya", "b": "openai-decisions-api"}at/mcp, no key