# Granite Switch 4.1 vs ScaleDown

> Granite Switch 4.1 scores 59.4 (C) to ScaleDown's 48.6 (D) for decision models. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-17

Granite Switch 4.1 scores 59.4 (C) on agent readiness against ScaleDown's 48.6 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. ScaleDown leads on schema & documentation and agent ergonomics. 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
- ScaleDown: grade D, 48.6/100, rank #917 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scaledown.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scaledown.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
- Best document parsing, OCR and extraction APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/document-extraction/index.md
- All 128 documents comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/document-extraction/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:
- Reliability, 46 against 20
- Security & auth, 54 against 48
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 40
- Maintenance & community, 81 against 56
- Transparency & trust, 74 against 54

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

### ScaleDown (D)

Good for: Cheap, high-volume labelling, routing and yes or no checks where a probability is more useful than prose, and for pulling described fields with offsets from text, images or PDFs.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 69 against 55
- Agent ergonomics, 76 against 66

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: No status page, no published rate limits and no SLA outside enterprise contracts


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Granite Switch 4.1 | ScaleDown | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 46 | 20 | Granite Switch 4.1 +26 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 69 | ScaleDown +14 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 66 | 76 | ScaleDown +10 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 54 | 48 | Granite Switch 4.1 +6 |
| 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 | 56 | Granite Switch 4.1 +25 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 54 | Granite Switch 4.1 +20 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **59.4 · C** | **48.6 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Granite Switch 4.1 | ScaleDown |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | IBM | Carbon ScaleDown, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.scaledown.xyz` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache 2.0 for the weights, the adapters and the repository | Proprietary hosted models under ScaleDown's Terms of Service. The langchain-scaledown integration is MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-14 | 2026-10-14 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models |  | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | none | 0 stars |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | none |

## 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.

**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.

## 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

### 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

## Questions

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

Granite Switch 4.1 scores 59.4 (C) on agent readiness against ScaleDown's 48.6 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. ScaleDown leads on schema & documentation and agent ergonomics.

### Do Granite Switch 4.1 and ScaleDown need an API key?

Granite Switch 4.1 needs no key. ScaleDown needs an API key.

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

No hosted endpoint is listed for Granite Switch 4.1. ScaleDown has a hosted endpoint at https://api.scaledown.xyz.

### Are Granite Switch 4.1 and ScaleDown 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 ScaleDown.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Granite Switch 4.1 or ScaleDown

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

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