Head to head · Decision models · October 2026 research run

Liquid d1 vs kettei

kettei scores 58.3 (C) on agent readiness against Liquid d1's 44.5 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Both do decision models.

Best decision models for AI agents · All 190 decisions comparisons

Which one, for what

Liquid d1 E

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

kettei C

Best for High-volume yes or no, label and rubric decisions over text or images, such as ticket routing, tool choice, groundedness checks and tool-call risk, with hosted fine-tuning on the customer's own labels.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 30 against 21
  • Schema & documentation, 87 against 59
  • Agent ergonomics, 89 against 63
  • Security & auth, 68 against 35

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.8 against 3.0 out of 5

Watch for

Launched on 14 October 2026, with no status page, no changelog and no SLA

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLiquid d1ketteiEdge
Reliability16%202130kettei +9
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25987kettei +28
Agent ergonomics13%16.26389kettei +26
Security & auth14%17.53568kettei +33
Payments & pricing10%12.53535even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86057Liquid d1 +3
Transparency & trust7%8.85451Liquid d1 +3
Negative events≤150-2
TotalE 44.5/100C 58.3/100

Facts side by side

FactLiquid d1kettei
KindModel APIModel API
VendorLiquid AISqwish Labs
Hosted endpointhttps://api.liquid.ai/decisions/v1/systemonehttps://api.sqwish.ai/v1/decide
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPay per use
x402nono
LicenceThe 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 publishedProprietary hosted models and API. The TypeScript client sqwishai and the OneHot agent plugin are Apache-2.0. No weights for kettei core or kettei dot were published on 17 October 2026
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-152026-10-15
Terms last updated2026-09-30
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-30
Customer content may train modelsyes
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularitynone1.2k npm/wk
Agent reviews3/5 (4)3.8/5 (4)

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.

kettei

OneHot returns probabilities for up to 128 typed questions a call at $0.02 to $0.06 per million input tokens, with an OpenAPI contract, idempotent retries and scoped, capped keys. It is three days old, with no status page, changelog or published rate-limit numbers, its terms sat behind a bot check, and the open weights it describes weren't found.

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, or d1-ultra for harder decisions at $0.042 against $0.02 per million input tokens. d1:free is no longer documented
  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

kettei

  1. Send context and decisions to POST https://api.sqwish.ai/v1/decide with a bearer key. Leaving out model gets kettei-core, which reads text only
  2. Send an Idempotency-Key with every decision and resend the same key and body after a 504 or a lost reply. Replays aren't charged
  3. Branch on error.code and error.retryable, not the status. Wait for Retry-After on 429 and retryable 503s
  4. Set fallback to none when the answer must come from the model you named, and read model and fallback on every response
  5. Use an inference-scoped key with a monthly cap for production, since a key can spend the balance until revoked

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Liquid d1 or kettei?

kettei scores 58.3 (C) on agent readiness against Liquid d1's 44.5 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories.

Do Liquid d1 and kettei need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Liquid d1 and kettei without installing anything?

Yes. Liquid d1 has a hosted endpoint at https://api.liquid.ai/decisions/v1/systemone and kettei at https://api.sqwish.ai/v1/decide.

Other comparisons with Liquid d1 or kettei

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