# Granite Switch 4.1 vs Drex 1.5

> Drex 1.5 scores 69.5 (B) to Granite Switch 4.1's 59.4 (C) for decision models. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-17

Drex 1.5 scores 69.5 (B) on agent readiness against Granite Switch 4.1's 59.4 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Granite Switch 4.1 leads on payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do decision models.

- Granite Switch 4.1: grade C, 59.4/100, rank #601 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/granite-switch.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/granite-switch.json
- Drex 1.5: grade B, 69.5/100, rank #194 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/nace-drex.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/nace-drex.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

### Granite Switch 4.1 (C)

Good for: A team with a GPU that wants chat, routing decisions, a safety gate and English transcription from one self-hosted endpoint under a permissive licence.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 40
- Maintenance & community, 81 against 65
- Transparency & trust, 74 against 61

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Open source

Watch for: The decision adapter has no typed request format. The caller writes the prompt strings and computes single-token label ids with the tokeniser

### Drex 1.5 (B)

Good for: Routing, triage and yes or no gates inside an agent, where the caller supplies the options and acts on the probabilities. Suited to hosted use at a low per-token price, or to open weights where the licence fits.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 80 against 46
- Schema & documentation, 88 against 55
- Agent ergonomics, 85 against 66
- Security & auth, 65 against 54

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.5 against 3.0 out of 5

Watch for: The rank 1 claim comes from Nace's own run on Decision Index 0.3.1, and Drex is not on the public board for 0.3 or 0.2.1.


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Granite Switch 4.1 | Drex 1.5 | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 46 | 80 | Drex 1.5 +34 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 88 | Drex 1.5 +33 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 66 | 85 | Drex 1.5 +19 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 54 | 65 | Drex 1.5 +11 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 40 | Granite Switch 4.1 +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 81 | 65 | Granite Switch 4.1 +16 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 61 | Granite Switch 4.1 +13 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **59.4 · C** | **69.5 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Granite Switch 4.1 | Drex 1.5 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | IBM | Nace AI, Inc. (Nace.AI) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://console.nace.ai/v1/systemone` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache 2.0 for the weights, the adapters and the repository | Hosted API under the Nace AI Terms of Service, last updated 5 May 2026. Weights under the Nace AI Open RAIL-M licence (modified, version 1.0, October 2026), which is not an open-source licence. Businesses above $1 million in revenue or funding need a separate commercial licence, and competing products are excluded. The bundled code/kev package, derived from Jared Palmer's Kev (https://github.com/jaredpalmer/kev), and the GitHub repository are Apache-2.0, and the agent skill is MIT. |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-14 | 2026-09-28 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-10-09 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-10-09 |
| Customer content may train models |  | yes, with an opt-out |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | yes |
| Popularity | none | 318 npm/wk, 156 PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | 3.5/5 (4) |

## Verdicts

**Granite Switch 4.1.** One self-hosted Apache 2.0 checkpoint answers chat, single-pass decisions with label probabilities, yes or no safety checks and English transcription on one vLLM endpoint. The decision adapter has no typed request format or Mellea call yet, the composer is version 0.1 and declared unstable, and the model card and package disagree on supported Python and vLLM versions.

**Drex 1.5.** The hosted endpoint has a public OpenAPI document, published limits and pinned model versions, at $0.05 per million input tokens with no output charge. The #1 under 10B claim rests on Nace's own run, since Drex is absent from both public boards. Weights carry Open RAIL-M, which requires a commercial licence above $1 million in revenue or funding.

## Before you call either

### Granite Switch 4.1

1. Pass `chat_template_kwargs: {"adapter_name": "decision"}` or `"guardian-core"`. Without it the request is ordinary chat on the base model
2. For a decision, send the state and the `### DECISION` question as two user turns, request `logprob_token_ids` for the option labels, and set `max_completion_tokens` to 1
3. Use single-token option labels. Split more than 128 labels into chunks with the identical prompt and apply one softmax over all returned logprobs
4. Parse `guardian-core` answers as JSON, `{"score": "yes"}` or `{"score": "no"}`, where yes means the criterion is met
5. Add authentication before exposing the vLLM server. Neither vLLM nor the checkpoint requires a key by default

### Drex 1.5

1. Call https://console.nace.ai/v1/systemone with Authorization: Bearer nace_sk_..., and pin model drex-v1.5 rather than drex-latest in production.
2. Stop on 402 insufficient_credit or 402 payment_required until credit is topped up or the unpaid invoice is paid.
3. Retry 429 and 529 after retry-after-ms. On a 422 for an unknown model, use one of the ids the error message lists.
4. Keep state below 131,072 tokens and the body below 1,048,576 bytes, and send at most 512 questions per request.
5. Keep the key on a server. A key in browser code is exposed, and the /v1 routes send no Access-Control-Allow-Origin header.
6. Check usage.input_tokens and the usage CSV after retries, since /v1/systemone documents no idempotency key.

## Tutorials

- [Detect an urgent incident with Drex](https://www.anchorterminal.com/tutorials/nace-drex/), for Drex 1.5

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Granite Switch 4.1 or Drex 1.5?

Drex 1.5 scores 69.5 (B) on agent readiness against Granite Switch 4.1's 59.4 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Granite Switch 4.1 leads on payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust.

### Do Granite Switch 4.1 and Drex 1.5 need an API key?

Granite Switch 4.1 needs no key. Drex 1.5 needs an API key.

### Can an agent call Granite Switch 4.1 and Drex 1.5 without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Granite Switch 4.1. Drex 1.5 has a hosted endpoint at https://console.nace.ai/v1/systemone.

### Are Granite Switch 4.1 and Drex 1.5 open source?

Granite Switch 4.1 is open source (Apache 2.0 for the weights, the adapters and the repository). No open-source release is listed for Drex 1.5.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Granite Switch 4.1 or Drex 1.5

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

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