# Liquid d1 vs kettei

> kettei scores 58.3 (C) to Liquid d1's 44.5 (E) for decision models. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liquid-d1-vs-sqwish-kettei
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liquid-d1-vs-sqwish-kettei.md (~2,800 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liquid-d1-vs-sqwish-kettei.min.md (~780 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liquid-d1-vs-sqwish-kettei.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
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- 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: 2026-10-17

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.

- Liquid d1: grade E, 44.5/100, rank #990 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/liquid-d1.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/liquid-d1.json
- kettei: grade C, 58.3/100, rank #640 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/sqwish-kettei.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/sqwish-kettei.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

## 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, with d1-ultra for harder cases, 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

### kettei (C)

Good 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

| Category | Weight | Liquid d1 | kettei | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 21 | 30 | kettei +9 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 59 | 87 | kettei +28 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 63 | 89 | kettei +26 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 35 | 68 | kettei +33 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 35 | 35 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 57 | Liquid d1 +3 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 54 | 51 | Liquid d1 +3 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **44.5 · E** | **58.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Liquid d1 | kettei |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Liquid AI | Sqwish Labs |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.liquid.ai/decisions/v1/systemone` | `https://api.sqwish.ai/v1/decide` |
| 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 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 documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-15 | 2026-10-15 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-30 |  |
| Privacy policy last updated | 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 |  |
| Popularity | none | 1.2k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (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.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Liquid d1 or kettei

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

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp