# Laya vs kettei

> Laya scores 69.2 (B) to kettei's 58.3 (C) for decision models. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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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
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
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- Updated: 2026-10-17

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.

- Laya: grade B, 69.2/100, rank #208 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/convai-laya.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/convai-laya.json
- kettei: grade C, 58.3/100, rank #640 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/sqwish-kettei.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/sqwish-kettei.json
- Best decision models for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/decision-models/index.md
- All 190 decisions comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/decision-models/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 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)

Good 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 | Laya | kettei | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 65 | 30 | Laya +35 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 87 | kettei +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 89 | kettei +9 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 57 | 68 | kettei +11 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 35 | Laya +25 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 83 | 57 | Laya +26 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 62 | 51 | Laya +11 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **69.2 · B** | **58.3 · C** | |

## 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

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

### kettei

1. Send `context` and `decisions` to `POST https://api.sqwish.ai/v1/decide` with a bearer key. Leaving out `model` gets `kettei-core`, which reads text only
2. Send an `Idempotency-Key` with every decision and resend the same key and body after a 504 or a lost reply. Replays aren't charged
3. Branch on `error.code` and `error.retryable`, not the status. Wait for `Retry-After` on 429 and retryable 503s
4. Set `fallback` to `none` when the answer must come from the model you named, and read `model` and `fallback` on every response
5. Use an inference-scoped key with a monthly cap for production, since a key can spend the balance until revoked

## Tutorials

- [Route a support request locally with Laya](https://www.anchorterminal.com/tutorials/convai-laya/), for Laya

## 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.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Laya or kettei

- [Celeris-1 Decision vs Laya](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/celeris-1-decision-vs-convai-laya.md)
- [Celeris-1 Decision vs kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/celeris-1-decision-vs-sqwish-kettei.md)
- [Clef vs Laya](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-clef-vs-convai-laya.md)
- [Clef vs kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-clef-vs-sqwish-kettei.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 Granite Switch 4.1](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-granite-switch.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 pplx-decider-flash](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-pplx-decider-flash.md)
- [Laya vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-scaledown.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 kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/decider-vs-sqwish-kettei.md)
- [Decision 3.0 vs kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/decision-3-vs-sqwish-kettei.md)
- [GLiClass vs kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gliclass-vs-sqwish-kettei.md)
- [Granite Switch 4.1 vs kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-switch-vs-sqwish-kettei.md)
- [Kev vs kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jaredpalmer-kev-vs-sqwish-kettei.md)
- [Liquid d1 vs kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liquid-d1-vs-sqwish-kettei.md)
- [Microsoft-Decision-1 vs kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/microsoft-decision-1-vs-sqwish-kettei.md)
- [Drex 1.5 vs kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nace-drex-vs-sqwish-kettei.md)
- [OpenAI Decisions API vs kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/openai-decisions-api-vs-sqwish-kettei.md)
- [pplx-decider-flash vs kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pplx-decider-flash-vs-sqwish-kettei.md)
- [pplx-decider vs kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pplx-decider-vs-sqwish-kettei.md)
- [ScaleDown vs kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scaledown-vs-sqwish-kettei.md)
- [SPEV vs kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sprag-spev-vs-sqwish-kettei.md)
- [kettei vs Strands Decider 2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sqwish-kettei-vs-strands-decider.md)
- [kettei vs Jev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sqwish-kettei-vs-typesafe-jev.md)
- [kettei vs Vela 2.0](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sqwish-kettei-vs-vela.md)

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