GLiClass vs ScaleDown

GLiClass

An Apache-2.0 classifier that scores a whole label set in one encoder pass on the owner's hardware, with single-label, multi-label, hierarchical and few-shot modes. It returns label scores with no calibration claim, the bundled server has no authentication, and the last three test runs on the main branch, on 24 September 2026, failed.

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.

GLiClass

1. Pass --host 127.0.0.1 to python -m gliclass.serve, or put the port behind your own gateway. The server checks no credential
2. On a machine without a GPU add --device cpu --dtype float32 --num-gpus-per-replica 0. The default configuration expects CUDA
3. Send one text a request to POST /gliclass. An array in texts is cut to its first item without an error
4. Set multi_label to false for one label from a set. The default scores each label independently, so scores do not sum to 1
5. Keep text plus labels under the pipeline's 1,024-token max_length, or use ZeroShotClassificationWithChunkingPipeline. Longer input is truncated silently

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