Head to head · Decision models · October 2026 research run
Liquid d1 vs RightNow System Zero
RightNow System Zero scores 66.8 (B) on agent readiness against Liquid d1's 44.8 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do decision models.
Best decision models for AI agents · All 220 decisions comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Classification, routing, yes or no gates and rubric scoring over text and images at a low per-token price, with d1-ultra for harder cases, or on your own hardware with d1-3B where data can't leave.
No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.
Watch for
The terms of 30 September 2026 allow Liquid to train on API content, with no opt-out or zero-retention option found
Best for Typed decisions with per-option probabilities over text, JSON, images, audio and PDFs, including on streaming state
Ahead on
- Reliability, 50 against 21
- Schema & documentation, 83 against 59
- Agent ergonomics, 86 against 63
- Security & auth, 70 against 35
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 35
- Maintenance & community, 68 against 60
- Transparency & trust, 70 against 57
Also in its favour
- Free to start without a card
Watch for
Standard context is 38,000 tokens. The 64k, 128k and 1M bands are held, and video is a preview
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Liquid d1 | RightNow System Zero | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 21 | 50 | RightNow System Zero +29 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 59 | 83 | RightNow System Zero +24 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 63 | 86 | RightNow System Zero +23 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 35 | 70 | RightNow System Zero +35 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 35 | 40 | RightNow System Zero +5 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 60 | 68 | RightNow System Zero +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 57 | 70 | RightNow System Zero +13 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | E 44.8/100 | B 66.8/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Liquid d1 | RightNow System Zero |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Liquid AI | RightNow AI, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.liquid.ai/decisions/v1/systemone | https://api.rightnowai.co/v1/system-zero/decide |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, websocket |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | 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 | Proprietary hosted model under RightNow AI terms of use; the SDKs are Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-15 | 2026-10-27 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-30 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-30 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | yes | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | none |
Verdicts
Liquid d1
The hosted API costs $0.02 per million input tokens for d1 and $0.042 for d1-ultra, 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.
RightNow System Zero
A well-documented decision API with an OpenAPI file, idempotent retries, a detailed error catalogue, streaming over WebSocket and published per-unit prices with USD 5 of starting credit. Standard context is 38,000 tokens; the 64k, 128k and 1M bands are held and video is a preview. The latency and benchmark figures are RightNow's own, and several of its pages disagree.
Before you call either
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
d1, ord1-ultrafor harder decisions at $0.042 against $0.02 per million input tokens.d1:freeis no longer documented - 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
RightNow System Zero
- Send audio only as inline 16,000 Hz WAV. The FLAC, MP3, OGG and MP4 audio named on the blog are refused with media_unsupported.
- Keep state under 38,000 tokens. Long-context requests return 404 long_context_not_available, which never succeeds on retry.
- Reuse the same Idempotency-Key and body on retries, and stop when error.retryable or x-should-retry is false.
- Check every entry in answers even on HTTP 200, since one question can be refused while the others are answered.
- Treat probabilities as uncalibrated while calibrated is false, and pin system-zero-2.0.0 when answers must not move with the alias.
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Liquid d1 or RightNow System Zero?
RightNow System Zero scores 66.8 (B) on agent readiness against Liquid d1's 44.8 (E), and leads in every scored category.
Do Liquid d1 and RightNow System Zero need an API key?
Both need an API key.
Can an agent call Liquid d1 and RightNow System Zero without installing anything?
Yes. Liquid d1 has a hosted endpoint at https://api.liquid.ai/decisions/v1/systemone and RightNow System Zero at https://api.rightnowai.co/v1/system-zero/decide.
Other comparisons with Liquid d1 or RightNow System Zero
- Celeris-1 Decision vs Liquid d1
- Celeris-1 Decision vs RightNow System Zero
- Clef vs Liquid d1
- Clef vs RightNow System Zero
- Laya vs Liquid d1
- Laya vs RightNow System Zero
- Decider vs Liquid d1
- Decider vs RightNow System Zero
- Decision 3.0 vs Liquid d1
- Decision 3.0 vs RightNow System Zero
- GLiClass vs Liquid d1
- GLiClass vs RightNow System Zero
- Granite Switch 4.1 vs Liquid d1
- Granite Switch 4.1 vs RightNow System Zero
- Kev vs Liquid d1
- Kev vs RightNow System Zero
- Liquid d1 vs Microsoft-Decision-1
- Liquid d1 vs Drex 1.5
- Liquid d1 vs OpenAI Decisions API
- Liquid d1 vs pplx-decider
- Liquid d1 vs pplx-decider-flash
- Liquid d1 vs ScaleDown
- Liquid d1 vs SPEV
- Liquid d1 vs kettei
- Liquid d1 vs Strands Decider 2B
- Liquid d1 vs Jev
- Liquid d1 vs Vela 2.0
- Microsoft-Decision-1 vs RightNow System Zero
- Drex 1.5 vs RightNow System Zero
- OpenAI Decisions API vs RightNow System Zero
- pplx-decider-flash vs RightNow System Zero
- pplx-decider vs RightNow System Zero
- RightNow System Zero vs ScaleDown
- RightNow System Zero vs SPEV
- RightNow System Zero vs kettei
- RightNow System Zero vs Strands Decider 2B
- RightNow System Zero vs Jev
- RightNow System Zero vs Vela 2.0
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/liquid-d1-vs-rightnow-system-zero.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/liquid-d1.json·/api/v1/tools/rightnow-system-zero.json - From a terminal
anchor compare liquid-d1 rightnow-system-zero(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "liquid-d1", "b": "rightnow-system-zero"}at/mcp, no key