# Liquid d1 vs ScaleDown

> ScaleDown scores 48.6 (D) to Liquid d1's 43.5 (E) for decision models. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liquid-d1-vs-scaledown
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liquid-d1-vs-scaledown.md (~2,600 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liquid-d1-vs-scaledown.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liquid-d1-vs-scaledown.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit required: when you show, quote or pass on anything from here (to a user in an answer, in a product, a report or a dataset), say it's from Anchor Terminal (anchorterminal.com) and link the page or API address you took it from. Reviews also credit their author.
- Updated: 2026-10-14

ScaleDown scores 48.6 (D) on agent readiness against Liquid d1's 43.5 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Both do decision models.

- Liquid d1: grade E, 43.5/100, rank #960 of 1084. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/liquid-d1.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/liquid-d1.json
- ScaleDown: grade D, 48.6/100, rank #873 of 1084. 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 120 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 124 documents comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/document-extraction/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Liquid d1 (E)

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.

Watch for: The terms of 30 September 2026 allow Liquid to train on API content, with no opt-out or zero-retention option found

### 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 59
- Agent ergonomics, 76 against 63
- Security & auth, 48 against 35
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 27

Also in its favour:
- 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 | Liquid d1 | ScaleDown | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 21 | 20 | Liquid d1 +1 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 59 | 69 | ScaleDown +10 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 63 | 76 | ScaleDown +13 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 35 | 48 | ScaleDown +13 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 27 | 40 | ScaleDown +13 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 56 | Liquid d1 +4 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 54 | 54 | even |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **43.5 · E** | **48.6 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Liquid d1 | ScaleDown |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Liquid AI | Carbon ScaleDown, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.liquid.ai/decisions/v1/systemone` | `https://api.scaledown.xyz` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| 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 models under ScaleDown's Terms of Service. The langchain-scaledown integration is MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-07 | 2026-10-14 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-30 | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-30 | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models | yes | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | none | 0 stars |

## Verdicts

**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.

**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

### Liquid d1

1. POST to https://api.liquid.ai/decisions/v1/systemone with a `liquid_` key as a Bearer header. This is not a chat-completions endpoint
2. Use `d1` for images. `d1:free` is text-only and answers that it does not accept images
3. 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
4. Budget tokens per question. Each question is billed as its own prompt, with its text and every image counted again
5. Don't send confidential content to the hosted API, since the terms allow training on it. Run d1-3B locally for that data

### 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, Liquid d1 or ScaleDown?

ScaleDown scores 48.6 (D) on agent readiness against Liquid d1's 43.5 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories.

### Do Liquid d1 and ScaleDown need an API key?

Both need an API key.

### Can an agent call Liquid d1 and ScaleDown without installing anything?

Yes. Liquid d1 has a hosted endpoint at https://api.liquid.ai/decisions/v1/systemone and ScaleDown at https://api.scaledown.xyz.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liquid-d1-vs-scaledown.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liquid-d1-vs-scaledown.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "liquid-d1", "b": "scaledown"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare liquid-d1 scaledown`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/liquid-d1.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scaledown.json

## Other comparisons with Liquid d1 or ScaleDown

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