# Laya vs ScaleDown

> Laya scores 69.2 (B) to ScaleDown's 48.6 (D) for decision models. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-scaledown
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- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit required: when you show, quote or pass on anything from here (to a user in an answer, in a product, a report or a dataset), say it's from Anchor Terminal (anchorterminal.com) and link the page or API address you took it from. Reviews also credit their author.
- Updated: 2026-10-15

Laya scores 69.2 (B) on agent readiness against ScaleDown's 48.6 (D), and leads in every scored category. Both do decision models.

- Laya: grade B, 69.2/100, rank #202 of 1094. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/convai-laya.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/convai-laya.json
- ScaleDown: grade D, 48.6/100, rank #880 of 1094. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scaledown.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scaledown.json
- Best decision models for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/decision-models/index.md
- All 136 decisions comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/decision-models/index.md
- Best document parsing, OCR and extraction APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/document-extraction/index.md
- All 125 documents comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/document-extraction/index.md

## 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 20
- Schema & documentation, 80 against 69
- Security & auth, 57 against 48
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 40
- Maintenance & community, 83 against 56
- Transparency & trust, 62 against 54

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

### ScaleDown (D)

Good for: Cheap, high-volume labelling, routing and yes or no checks where a probability is more useful than prose, and for pulling described fields with offsets from text, images or PDFs.

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: No status page, no published rate limits and no SLA outside enterprise contracts


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Laya | ScaleDown | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 65 | 20 | Laya +45 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 69 | Laya +11 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 76 | Laya +4 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 57 | 48 | Laya +9 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 40 | Laya +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 83 | 56 | Laya +27 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 62 | 54 | Laya +8 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **69.2 · B** | **48.6 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Laya | ScaleDown |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Convai Innovations | Carbon ScaleDown, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.scaledown.xyz` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary hosted models under ScaleDown's Terms of Service. The langchain-scaledown integration is MIT |
| Tools exposed | 8 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-14 |
| 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 | 0 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.

**ScaleDown.** Classify answers Jev-shaped `choice`, `noul` and `score` questions with probabilities, and Extract returns values with confidences and character offsets, at $0.05 per million input tokens with output free. There is no status page, no published rate limit and no public changelog, and the site's compliance claims contradict each other.

## 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

### ScaleDown

1. Send several questions about one item in one `/v1/scaledown` call. Each becomes its own Classify call and the usage is summed
2. Pin `classify-1`, `extract-1` or `summarize-1` once you've tuned thresholds on your own labelled cases
3. Set `context_chars` to 0 and use `top_n` on Extract unless you need the 500 characters of context each side
4. Set `reasoning: false` on /classify when you only need the label. The reasoning call bills its input at 2x
5. Back off and retry on 429, 502 and 504. No limits are published and calls have no side effects

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Laya or ScaleDown?

Laya scores 69.2 (B) on agent readiness against ScaleDown's 48.6 (D), and leads in every scored category.

### Do Laya and ScaleDown need an API key?

Laya needs no key. ScaleDown needs an API key.

### Can an agent call Laya and ScaleDown without installing anything?

Laya runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. ScaleDown has a hosted endpoint at https://api.scaledown.xyz.

### Are Laya and ScaleDown open source?

Laya is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for ScaleDown.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-scaledown.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-scaledown.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "convai-laya", "b": "scaledown"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare convai-laya scaledown`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/convai-laya.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scaledown.json

## Other comparisons with Laya or ScaleDown

- [Celeris-1 Decision vs Laya](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/celeris-1-decision-vs-convai-laya.md)
- [Celeris-1 Decision vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/celeris-1-decision-vs-scaledown.md)
- [Clef vs Laya](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-clef-vs-convai-laya.md)
- [Clef vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-clef-vs-scaledown.md)
- [Laya vs Decider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-decider.md)
- [Laya vs Decision 3.0](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-decision-3.md)
- [Laya vs GLiClass](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-gliclass.md)
- [Laya vs Kev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-jaredpalmer-kev.md)
- [Laya vs Liquid d1](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-liquid-d1.md)
- [Laya vs Microsoft-Decision-1](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-microsoft-decision-1.md)
- [Laya vs Drex 1.5](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-nace-drex.md)
- [Laya vs OpenAI Decisions API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-openai-decisions-api.md)
- [Laya vs pplx-decider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-pplx-decider.md)
- [Laya vs SPEV](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-sprag-spev.md)
- [Laya vs Strands Decider 2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-strands-decider.md)
- [Laya vs Jev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-typesafe-jev.md)
- [Laya vs Vela 2.0](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-vela.md)
- [Decider vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/decider-vs-scaledown.md)
- [Decision 3.0 vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/decision-3-vs-scaledown.md)
- [GLiClass vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gliclass-vs-scaledown.md)
- [Kev vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jaredpalmer-kev-vs-scaledown.md)
- [Liquid d1 vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liquid-d1-vs-scaledown.md)
- [Microsoft-Decision-1 vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/microsoft-decision-1-vs-scaledown.md)
- [Drex 1.5 vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nace-drex-vs-scaledown.md)
- [OpenAI Decisions API vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/openai-decisions-api-vs-scaledown.md)
- [pplx-decider vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pplx-decider-vs-scaledown.md)
- [ScaleDown vs SPEV](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scaledown-vs-sprag-spev.md)
- [ScaleDown vs Strands Decider 2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scaledown-vs-strands-decider.md)
- [ScaleDown vs Jev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scaledown-vs-typesafe-jev.md)
- [ScaleDown vs Vela 2.0](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scaledown-vs-vela.md)