Head to head · Inference decision · October 2026 research run
Liquid d1 vs Strands Decider 2B
Strands Decider 2B scores 61.3 (C) on agent readiness against Liquid d1's 43.5 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do inference decision.
Which one, for what
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.
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
Good for Cheap, local classification, routing, triage and tool-call checks on short text inside Strands or other Python agents, and for teams who want to retrain a decision model from a published recipe.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 50 against 21
- Schema & documentation, 76 against 59
- Agent ergonomics, 69 against 63
- Security & auth, 49 against 35
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 27
- Maintenance & community, 79 against 60
Also in its favour
- No key needed to call it
- Open source
Watch for
Version 0.1.0, described as experimental in its package metadata, with no changelog file
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Liquid d1 | Strands Decider 2B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 21 | 50 | Strands Decider 2B +29 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 59 | 76 | Strands Decider 2B +17 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 63 | 69 | Strands Decider 2B +6 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 35 | 49 | Strands Decider 2B +14 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 27 | 60 | Strands Decider 2B +33 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 60 | 79 | Strands Decider 2B +19 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 54 | 54 | even |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 43.5 · E | 61.3 · C |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Liquid d1 | Strands Decider 2B |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Liquid AI | Amazon Web Services (Strands Agents) |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.liquid.ai/decisions/v1/systemone | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| 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 | Apache-2.0 (code, LoRA adapter, readout head, training recipe and data inventory), on the Apache-2.0 Qwen3.5-2B-Base |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-07 | 2026-10-05 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-30 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-30 | no document linked |
| 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 | none | 2/5 (1) |
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.
Strands Decider 2B
A 1.9B-parameter Apache-2.0 decision model that runs on a laptop GPU, an Apple silicon Mac or a CPU, with its training data, recipe and per-version results published. It's an experimental 0.1.0 release with a 4,096-token window that cuts long states by default, and its local server has no authentication.
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
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
Strands Decider 2B
- Pin the checkpoint by its full name, such as
StrandsAgents/strands-decider-2B-hobson-v21, since each version is a separate Hugging Face repository - Start the server with
--strict-windowwhen a cut state would make an answer wrong. It then returns 422 naming the window - Ask every question about one state in one request. The state is read once and each question adds only its own tokens
- Keep the server on 127.0.0.1 or put an authenticating proxy in front. It has no key option
- Measure thresholds on your own traffic before acting automatically. The card says confidence bands hold for short classification only
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Liquid d1 or Strands Decider 2B?
Strands Decider 2B scores 61.3 (C) on agent readiness against Liquid d1's 43.5 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.
Do Liquid d1 and Strands Decider 2B need an API key?
Liquid d1 needs an API key. Strands Decider 2B needs no key.
Can an agent call Liquid d1 and Strands Decider 2B without installing anything?
Liquid d1 has a hosted endpoint at https://api.liquid.ai/decisions/v1/systemone. No hosted endpoint is listed for Strands Decider 2B.
Are Liquid d1 and Strands Decider 2B open source?
No open-source release is listed for Liquid d1. Strands Decider 2B is open source (Apache-2.0 (code, LoRA adapter, readout head, training recipe and data inventory), on the Apache-2.0 Qwen3.5-2B-Base).
Other comparisons with Liquid d1 or Strands Decider 2B
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/liquid-d1-vs-strands-decider.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/liquid-d1.json·/api/v1/tools/strands-decider.json - From a terminal
anchor compare liquid-d1 strands-decider(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "liquid-d1", "b": "strands-decider"}at/mcp, no key