Head to head · Inference decision · October 2026 research run
Kev vs Liquid d1
Kev scores 67.4 (B) on agent readiness against Liquid d1's 43.5 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Liquid d1 leads on transparency & trust. Both do inference decision.
Which one, for what
Kev B
Good for Self-hosted classification, routing, triage and rubric scoring where a probability matters, especially for teams already calling Jev who want the same API on their own hardware.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 73 against 21
- Schema & documentation, 77 against 59
- Agent ergonomics, 78 against 63
- Security & auth, 49 against 35
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 27
- Maintenance & community, 83 against 60
Also in its favour
- No key needed to call it
- Open source
Watch for
No package. pip install kev installs an unrelated 2021 ORM, so Kev runs from a Git clone with uv
Good for Classification, routing, yes or no gates and rubric scoring over text and images at a low per-token price, or on your own hardware with d1-3B where data can't leave.
Ahead on
- Transparency & trust, 54 against 49
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
Watch for
The terms of 30 September 2026 allow Liquid to train on API content, with no opt-out or zero-retention option found
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Kev | Liquid d1 | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 73 | 21 | Kev +52 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 77 | 59 | Kev +18 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 78 | 63 | Kev +15 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 49 | 35 | Kev +14 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 27 | Kev +33 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 83 | 60 | Kev +23 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 49 | 54 | Liquid d1 +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 67.4 · B | 43.5 · E |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Kev | Liquid d1 |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Jared Palmer | Liquid AI |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://api.liquid.ai/decisions/v1/systemone |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (code, adapters and weights) | The hosted d1 model is proprietary under Liquid AI's terms of service. The d1-3B and d1-omni-600M weights and model code are under the LFM Open Licence v1.0, which is based on Apache-2.0 and conditions commercial use on annual revenue under $10 million. Training code and data aren't published |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-09-30 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-09-30 |
| Customer content may train models | yes | |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | none |
Verdicts
Kev
Apache-2.0 code, adapters and heads on Apache-2.0 Qwen bases, with release tarballs and SHA-256 checksums for the 0.8B, 4B and 9B models. No package. pip install kev installs an unrelated 2021 ORM, so Kev runs from a Git clone with uv.
Liquid d1
The hosted API costs $0.04 per million input tokens and takes TypeSafe's System One request, and the d1-3B weights run locally through Transformers or llama.cpp. Liquid's terms allow it to train on API content, and no status page, rate limits or error reference were found. The family launched between 22 September and 7 October 2026.
Before you call either
Kev
- Install from the repository. The
kevpackage on PyPI is an unrelated project - Pin a checkpoint with
@v1.0, as injaredpalmer/kev-4b@v1.0, so tuned thresholds keep their meaning - Keep states under 8,192 tokens on Kev-0.8B, 4B and 9B, or use Kev-27B for long documents
- Set
KEV_DATE_FACTS=1when a decision depends on the gap between two dates - Expect a 422 naming the token count when a state passes 65,536 tokens. The server refuses it instead of cutting it
Liquid d1
- POST to https://api.liquid.ai/decisions/v1/systemone with a
liquid_key as a Bearer header. This is not a chat-completions endpoint - Use
d1for images.d1:freeis text-only and answers that it does not accept images - Send images as Base64 data URLs in
images, at most 8, with the whole JSON body under 4.5 MB. Remote image URLs are refused - Budget tokens per question. Each question is billed as its own prompt, with its text and every image counted again
- Don't send confidential content to the hosted API, since the terms allow training on it. Run d1-3B locally for that data
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Kev or Liquid d1?
Kev scores 67.4 (B) on agent readiness against Liquid d1's 43.5 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Liquid d1 leads on transparency & trust.
Do Kev and Liquid d1 need an API key?
Kev needs no key. Liquid d1 needs an API key.
Can an agent call Kev and Liquid d1 without installing anything?
No hosted endpoint is listed for Kev. Liquid d1 has a hosted endpoint at https://api.liquid.ai/decisions/v1/systemone.
Are Kev and Liquid d1 open source?
Kev is open source (Apache-2.0 (code, adapters and weights)). No open-source release is listed for Liquid d1.
Other comparisons with Kev or Liquid d1
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/jaredpalmer-kev-vs-liquid-d1.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/jaredpalmer-kev.json·/api/v1/tools/liquid-d1.json - From a terminal
anchor compare jaredpalmer-kev liquid-d1(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "jaredpalmer-kev", "b": "liquid-d1"}at/mcp, no key