Head to head · Inference decision · October 2026 research run
Liquid d1 vs Vela 2.0
Vela 2.0 scores 66.5 (B) on agent readiness against Liquid d1's 43.5 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Liquid d1 leads on transparency & trust. 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.
Ahead on
- Transparency & trust, 54 against 48
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
Vela 2.0 B
Good for Self-hosted routing and guardrail checks in one call, where span offsets for personal data or unsupported claims matter.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 57 against 21
- Schema & documentation, 78 against 59
- Agent ergonomics, 79 against 63
- Security & auth, 60 against 35
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 27
- Maintenance & community, 84 against 60
Also in its favour
- No key needed to call it
- Open source
Watch for
No version tags on the four Hub repositories, and the 4B and 9B weights were replaced in place on 3 October 2026
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Liquid d1 | Vela 2.0 | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 21 | 57 | Vela 2.0 +36 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 59 | 78 | Vela 2.0 +19 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 63 | 79 | Vela 2.0 +16 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 35 | 60 | Vela 2.0 +25 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 27 | 60 | Vela 2.0 +33 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 60 | 84 | Vela 2.0 +24 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 54 | 48 | Liquid d1 +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 43.5 · E | 66.5 · B |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Liquid d1 | Vela 2.0 |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Liquid AI | vLLM Semantic Router project and KR Labs |
| 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 (weights, code and documentation). The 0.3B's tokeniser keeps the Gemma Terms of Use, and training data keeps its own licences |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-07 | 2026-10-06 |
| 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 | |
| Popularity | none | 6.1k 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.
Vela 2.0
One self-hosted call answers routing, prompt-attack, personal-data and unsupported-claim questions with probabilities and character offsets, under Apache-2.0 with SHA-256 manifests. The models are days old and carry no Hub version tags, and the three larger sizes keep 74 to 89 per cent of their Decision 2.0 bases on the Jev Decision Index by the authors' figures.
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
Vela 2.0
- Pin a commit hash with
revision=when loading from the Hub. The repositories have no tags andmainhas changed since launch - Send the served name in
model, for examplevllm-sr/Vela-2.0-4B. The bundled server answers 422 to any other name - Name span questions
pii,haluortoxic, or set"head": "router", to get the trained router head. Other labels go to the broad head - Keep input under 16,384 tokens a sequence (8,192 on the 0.3B). The bundled server answers 413 when the questions alone don't fit
- Set
VELA2_API_KEYbefore binding the bundled server beyond 127.0.0.1, and keep the model runtime on a trusted network
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Liquid d1 or Vela 2.0?
Vela 2.0 scores 66.5 (B) on agent readiness against Liquid d1's 43.5 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Liquid d1 leads on transparency & trust.
Do Liquid d1 and Vela 2.0 need an API key?
Liquid d1 needs an API key. Vela 2.0 needs no key.
Can an agent call Liquid d1 and Vela 2.0 without installing anything?
Liquid d1 has a hosted endpoint at https://api.liquid.ai/decisions/v1/systemone. No hosted endpoint is listed for Vela 2.0.
Are Liquid d1 and Vela 2.0 open source?
No open-source release is listed for Liquid d1. Vela 2.0 is open source (Apache-2.0 (weights, code and documentation). The 0.3B's tokeniser keeps the Gemma Terms of Use, and training data keeps its own licences).
Other comparisons with Liquid d1 or Vela 2.0
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/liquid-d1-vs-vela.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/liquid-d1.json·/api/v1/tools/vela.json - From a terminal
anchor compare liquid-d1 vela(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "liquid-d1", "b": "vela"}at/mcp, no key