Head to head · Inference decision · October 2026 research run

GLiClass vs Vela 2.0

Vela 2.0 scores 66.5 (B) on agent readiness against GLiClass's 49.9 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. GLiClass leads on transparency & trust. Both do inference decision.

Which one, for what

GLiClass D

Good for Topic, intent and sentiment routing over a known label set on the owner's own CPU or GPU, where many labels must be scored at once.

Ahead on

  • Transparency & trust, 64 against 48

Watch for

No calibration evidence. The cards report F1 only, and the docs tell users to calibrate thresholds on their own traffic

Vela 2.0 B

Good for Self-hosted routing and guardrail checks in one call, where span offsets for personal data or unsupported claims matter.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 57 against 43
  • Schema & documentation, 78 against 49
  • Agent ergonomics, 79 against 60
  • Security & auth, 60 against 38
  • Maintenance & community, 84 against 44

Watch for

No version tags on the four Hub repositories, and the 4B and 9B weights were replaced in place on 3 October 2026

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGLiClassVela 2.0Edge
Reliability16%204357Vela 2.0 +14
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.24978Vela 2.0 +29
Agent ergonomics13%16.26079Vela 2.0 +19
Security & auth14%17.53860Vela 2.0 +22
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.84484Vela 2.0 +40
Transparency & trust7%8.86448GLiClass +16
Negative events≤1500
Total49.9 · D66.5 · B

Facts side by side

FactGLiClassVela 2.0
KindModel APIModel API
VendorKnowledgatorvLLM Semantic Router project and KR Labs
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0 (library and the model weights we checked)Apache-2.0 (weights, code and documentation). The 0.3B's tokeniser keeps the Gemma Terms of Use, and training data keeps its own licences
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-07-212026-10-06
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno 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
Popularity555 stars, 13k PyPI/wk6.1k stars

Verdicts

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.

Vela 2.0

One self-hosted call answers routing, prompt-attack, personal-data and unsupported-claim questions with probabilities and character offsets, under Apache-2.0 with SHA-256 manifests. The models are days old and carry no Hub version tags, and the three larger sizes keep 74 to 89 per cent of their Decision 2.0 bases on the Jev Decision Index by the authors' figures.

Before you call either

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

Vela 2.0

  1. Pin a commit hash with revision= when loading from the Hub. The repositories have no tags and main has changed since launch
  2. Send the served name in model, for example vllm-sr/Vela-2.0-4B. The bundled server answers 422 to any other name
  3. Name span questions pii, halu or toxic, or set "head": "router", to get the trained router head. Other labels go to the broad head
  4. Keep input under 16,384 tokens a sequence (8,192 on the 0.3B). The bundled server answers 413 when the questions alone don't fit
  5. Set VELA2_API_KEY before binding the bundled server beyond 127.0.0.1, and keep the model runtime on a trusted network

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, GLiClass or Vela 2.0?

Vela 2.0 scores 66.5 (B) on agent readiness against GLiClass's 49.9 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. GLiClass leads on transparency & trust.

Do GLiClass and Vela 2.0 need an API key?

Neither needs a key.

Can an agent call GLiClass and Vela 2.0 without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for GLiClass. No hosted endpoint is listed for Vela 2.0.

Are GLiClass and Vela 2.0 open source?

Yes. GLiClass is open source (Apache-2.0 (library and the model weights we checked)). Vela 2.0 is open source (Apache-2.0 (weights, code and documentation). The 0.3B's tokeniser keeps the Gemma Terms of Use, and training data keeps its own licences).

Other comparisons with GLiClass or Vela 2.0

Machine-readable

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