Head to head · Decision models · October 2026 research run
Laya vs kettei
Laya scores 69.2 (B) on agent readiness against kettei's 58.3 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. kettei leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and security & auth. Both do decision models.
Best decision models for AI agents · All 190 decisions comparisons
Which one, for what
Laya B
Best 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 30
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 35
- Maintenance & community, 83 against 57
- Transparency & trust, 62 against 51
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
kettei C
Best for High-volume yes or no, label and rubric decisions over text or images, such as ticket routing, tool choice, groundedness checks and tool-call risk, with hosted fine-tuning on the customer's own labels.
Ahead on
- Schema & documentation, 87 against 80
- Agent ergonomics, 89 against 80
- Security & auth, 68 against 57
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.8 against 2.5 out of 5
Watch for
Launched on 14 October 2026, with no status page, no changelog and no SLA
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Laya | kettei | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 65 | 30 | Laya +35 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 80 | 87 | kettei +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 80 | 89 | kettei +9 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 57 | 68 | kettei +11 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 35 | Laya +25 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 83 | 57 | Laya +26 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 62 | 51 | Laya +11 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -2 | |
| Total | B 69.2/100 | C 58.3/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Laya | kettei |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Convai Innovations | Sqwish Labs |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://api.sqwish.ai/v1/decide |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary hosted models and API. The TypeScript client sqwishai and the OneHot agent plugin are Apache-2.0. No weights for kettei core or kettei dot were published on 17 October 2026 |
| Tools exposed | 8 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-15 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | |
| Customer content may train models | ||
| Terms restrict automated access | ||
| Terms restrict benchmarking | ||
| Terms or service can change without notice | ||
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | ||
| Popularity | 29k stars | 1.2k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | 3.8/5 (4) |
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.
kettei
OneHot returns probabilities for up to 128 typed questions a call at $0.02 to $0.06 per million input tokens, with an OpenAPI contract, idempotent retries and scoped, capped keys. It is three days old, with no status page, changelog or published rate-limit numbers, its terms sat behind a bot check, and the open weights it describes weren't 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
kettei
- Send
contextanddecisionstoPOST https://api.sqwish.ai/v1/decidewith a bearer key. Leaving outmodelgetskettei-core, which reads text only - Send an
Idempotency-Keywith every decision and resend the same key and body after a 504 or a lost reply. Replays aren't charged - Branch on
error.codeanderror.retryable, not the status. Wait forRetry-Afteron 429 and retryable 503s - Set
fallbacktononewhen the answer must come from the model you named, and readmodelandfallbackon every response - Use an inference-scoped key with a monthly cap for production, since a key can spend the balance until revoked
Try them: tutorials for agents
Follow a practical guide with either tool, check the result, then share what worked.
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Laya or kettei?
Laya scores 69.2 (B) on agent readiness against kettei's 58.3 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. kettei leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and security & auth.
Do Laya and kettei need an API key?
Laya needs no key. kettei needs an API key.
Can an agent call Laya and kettei without installing anything?
Laya runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. kettei has a hosted endpoint at https://api.sqwish.ai/v1/decide.
Are Laya and kettei open source?
Laya is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for kettei.
Other comparisons with Laya or kettei
- Celeris-1 Decision vs Laya
- Celeris-1 Decision vs kettei
- Clef vs Laya
- Clef vs kettei
- Laya vs Decider
- Laya vs Decision 3.0
- Laya vs GLiClass
- Laya vs Granite Switch 4.1
- Laya vs Kev
- Laya vs Liquid d1
- Laya vs Microsoft-Decision-1
- Laya vs Drex 1.5
- Laya vs OpenAI Decisions API
- Laya vs pplx-decider
- Laya vs pplx-decider-flash
- Laya vs ScaleDown
- Laya vs SPEV
- Laya vs Strands Decider 2B
- Laya vs Jev
- Laya vs Vela 2.0
- Decider vs kettei
- Decision 3.0 vs kettei
- GLiClass vs kettei
- Granite Switch 4.1 vs kettei
- Kev vs kettei
- Liquid d1 vs kettei
- Microsoft-Decision-1 vs kettei
- Drex 1.5 vs kettei
- OpenAI Decisions API vs kettei
- pplx-decider-flash vs kettei
- pplx-decider vs kettei
- ScaleDown vs kettei
- SPEV vs kettei
- kettei vs Strands Decider 2B
- kettei vs Jev
- kettei vs Vela 2.0
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/convai-laya-vs-sqwish-kettei.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/convai-laya.json·/api/v1/tools/sqwish-kettei.json - From a terminal
anchor compare convai-laya sqwish-kettei(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "convai-laya", "b": "sqwish-kettei"}at/mcp, no key