# Granite Switch 4.1 vs pplx-decider-flash

> pplx-decider-flash scores 67.9 (B) to Granite Switch 4.1's 59.4 (C) for decision models. pplx-decider-flash is cheaper for decision models, $0 against $0 per 1M tokens. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-switch-vs-pplx-decider-flash
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- Updated: 2026-10-17

pplx-decider-flash scores 67.9 (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 and maintenance & community. Both do decision models. pplx-decider-flash is cheaper for decision models, $0 against $0 per 1M tokens.

- 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
- pplx-decider-flash: grade B, 67.9/100, rank #260 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/pplx-decider-flash.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/pplx-decider-flash.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 25
- Maintenance & community, 81 against 67

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

### pplx-decider-flash (B)

Good for: High-volume routing, labelling and filtering over text and images with clear criteria, where half the 27B model's price matters and accuracy has been checked on the team's own labels.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 66 against 46
- Schema & documentation, 89 against 55
- Agent ergonomics, 81 against 66
- Security & auth, 68 against 54

Also in its favour:
- Cheaper for decision models, $0 against $0 per 1M tokens
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: Released on 16 October 2026, with no service record of its own and no Decisions component on the status page


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Granite Switch 4.1 | pplx-decider-flash | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 46 | 66 | pplx-decider-flash +20 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 89 | pplx-decider-flash +34 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 66 | 81 | pplx-decider-flash +15 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 54 | 68 | pplx-decider-flash +14 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 25 | Granite Switch 4.1 +35 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 81 | 67 | Granite Switch 4.1 +14 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 71 | Granite Switch 4.1 +3 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **59.4 · C** | **67.9 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Granite Switch 4.1 | pplx-decider-flash |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | IBM | Perplexity |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.perplexity.ai/v1/decisions` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Pay per use |
| Price for decision models | free | free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache 2.0 for the weights, the adapters and the repository | Apache-2.0 for the published weights and inference code. The hosted Decisions API is a proprietary service |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-14 | 2026-10-16 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked |  |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models |  |  |
| Terms restrict automated access |  |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  |  |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | 3.3/5 (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.

**pplx-decider-flash.** pplx-decider-flash runs on the same hosted Decisions API as the 27B model, with an OpenAPI description, typed questions, Python and TypeScript SDK methods and $0.01 per million input tokens, and its weights are public under Apache-2.0. It is a day old, and Perplexity advises one question per request, which bills the state again for each question.

## 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

### pplx-decider-flash

1. Send `Authorization: Bearer` with `model` set to `pplx-decider-flash-v1.2`. A key in `x-api-key` returns 401.
2. Send one question per request by default. Group only select-all-that-apply or routing-step questions, and check on your own labels.
3. Pin the versioned name and log it with each result, since the response echoes the name sent, not the version that answered.
4. Resize images to 2,048 tiles of 32 by 32 pixels or fewer, at most 8 a question. Larger images end in a 504 after about a minute.
5. Compare it with `pplx-decider-v1.2` on a labelled sample at your thresholds before choosing it.

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Granite Switch 4.1 or pplx-decider-flash?

pplx-decider-flash scores 67.9 (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 and maintenance & community.

### Which is cheaper for decision models, Granite Switch 4.1 or pplx-decider-flash?

Granite Switch 4.1, at free against free for pplx-decider-flash. These are the vendors' published prices for the job.

### Do Granite Switch 4.1 and pplx-decider-flash need an API key?

Granite Switch 4.1 needs no key. pplx-decider-flash needs an API key.

### Can an agent call Granite Switch 4.1 and pplx-decider-flash without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Granite Switch 4.1. pplx-decider-flash has a hosted endpoint at https://api.perplexity.ai/v1/decisions.

### Are Granite Switch 4.1 and pplx-decider-flash 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 pplx-decider-flash.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Granite Switch 4.1 or pplx-decider-flash

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

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