# Drex 1.5 vs Strands Decider 2B

> Drex 1.5 scores 69.7 (B) to Strands Decider 2B's 61.3 (C) for decision models. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nace-drex-vs-strands-decider
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nace-drex-vs-strands-decider.md (~2,800 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nace-drex-vs-strands-decider.min.md (~830 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nace-drex-vs-strands-decider.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
- Updated: 2026-10-10

Drex 1.5 scores 69.7 (B) on agent readiness against Strands Decider 2B's 61.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Strands Decider 2B leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do decision models.

- Drex 1.5: grade B, 69.7/100, rank #172 of 954. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/nace-drex.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/nace-drex.json
- Strands Decider 2B: grade C, 61.3/100, rank #472 of 954. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/strands-decider.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/strands-decider.json
- Best decision models for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/decision-models/index.md
- All 91 decisions comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/decision-models/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Drex 1.5 (B)

Good for: Routing, triage and yes or no gates inside an agent, where the caller supplies the options and acts on the probabilities. Suited to hosted use at a low per-token price, or to open weights where the licence fits.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 80 against 50
- Schema & documentation, 88 against 76
- Agent ergonomics, 85 against 69
- Security & auth, 65 against 49
- Transparency & trust, 63 against 54

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: The rank 1 claim comes from Nace's own run on Decision Index 0.3.1, and Drex is not on the public board for 0.3 or 0.2.1.

### Strands Decider 2B (C)

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:
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 40
- Maintenance & community, 79 against 65

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 | Drex 1.5 | Strands Decider 2B | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 80 | 50 | Drex 1.5 +30 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 88 | 76 | Drex 1.5 +12 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 85 | 69 | Drex 1.5 +16 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 65 | 49 | Drex 1.5 +16 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 60 | Strands Decider 2B +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 65 | 79 | Strands Decider 2B +14 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 63 | 54 | Drex 1.5 +9 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **69.7 · B** | **61.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Drex 1.5 | Strands Decider 2B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Nace AI, Inc. (Nace.AI) | Amazon Web Services (Strands Agents) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://console.nace.ai/v1/systemone` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Hosted API under the Nace AI Terms of Service, last updated 5 May 2026. Weights under the Nace AI Open RAIL-M licence (modified, version 1.0, October 2026), which is not an open-source licence. Businesses above $1 million in revenue or funding need a separate commercial licence, and competing products are excluded. The bundled code/kev package, derived from Jared Palmer's Kev (https://github.com/jaredpalmer/kev), and the GitHub repository are Apache-2.0, and the agent skill is MIT. | 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 | 2026-09-28 | 2026-10-05 |
| Terms last updated |  | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated |  | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models |  |  |
| Terms restrict automated access |  |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  |  |
| Popularity | 318 npm/wk, 156 PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | none | 2/5 (1) |

## Verdicts

**Drex 1.5.** The hosted endpoint has a public OpenAPI document, published limits and pinned model versions, at $0.05 per million input tokens with no output charge. The #1 under 10B claim rests on Nace's own run, since Drex is absent from both public boards. Weights carry Open RAIL-M, which requires a commercial licence above $1 million in revenue or funding.

**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

### Drex 1.5

1. Call https://console.nace.ai/v1/systemone with Authorization: Bearer nace_sk_..., and pin model drex-v1.5 rather than drex-latest in production.
2. Stop on 402 insufficient_credit or 402 payment_required until credit is topped up or the unpaid invoice is paid.
3. Retry 429 and 529 after retry-after-ms. On a 422 for an unknown model, use one of the ids the error message lists.
4. Keep state below 131,072 tokens and the body below 1,048,576 bytes, and send at most 512 questions per request.
5. Keep the key on a server. A key in browser code is exposed, and the /v1 routes send no Access-Control-Allow-Origin header.
6. Check usage.input_tokens and the usage CSV after retries, since /v1/systemone documents no idempotency key.

### Strands Decider 2B

1. Pin the checkpoint by its full name, such as `StrandsAgents/strands-decider-2B-hobson-v21`, since each version is a separate Hugging Face repository
2. Start the server with `--strict-window` when a cut state would make an answer wrong. It then returns 422 naming the window
3. Ask every question about one state in one request. The state is read once and each question adds only its own tokens
4. Keep the server on 127.0.0.1 or put an authenticating proxy in front. It has no key option
5. 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, Drex 1.5 or Strands Decider 2B?

Drex 1.5 scores 69.7 (B) on agent readiness against Strands Decider 2B's 61.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Strands Decider 2B leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

### Do Drex 1.5 and Strands Decider 2B need an API key?

Drex 1.5 needs an API key. Strands Decider 2B needs no key.

### Can an agent call Drex 1.5 and Strands Decider 2B without installing anything?

Drex 1.5 has a hosted endpoint at https://console.nace.ai/v1/systemone. No hosted endpoint is listed for Strands Decider 2B.

### Are Drex 1.5 and Strands Decider 2B open source?

No open-source release is listed for Drex 1.5. 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).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Drex 1.5 or Strands Decider 2B

- [Celeris-1 Decision vs Drex 1.5](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/celeris-1-decision-vs-nace-drex.md)
- [Celeris-1 Decision vs Strands Decider 2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/celeris-1-decision-vs-strands-decider.md)
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- [Microsoft-Decision-1 vs Drex 1.5](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/microsoft-decision-1-vs-nace-drex.md)
- [Microsoft-Decision-1 vs Strands Decider 2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/microsoft-decision-1-vs-strands-decider.md)
- [Drex 1.5 vs OpenAI Decisions API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nace-drex-vs-openai-decisions-api.md)
- [Drex 1.5 vs pplx-decider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nace-drex-vs-pplx-decider.md)
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- [Drex 1.5 vs Vela 2.0](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nace-drex-vs-vela.md)
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