# pplx-decider-flash vs ScaleDown

> pplx-decider-flash scores 67.9 (B) to ScaleDown's 48.6 (D) for decision models. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
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- Updated: 2026-10-17

pplx-decider-flash scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against ScaleDown's 48.6 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. ScaleDown leads on payments & pricing. Both do decision models.

- pplx-decider-flash: grade B, 67.9/100, rank #260 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/pplx-decider-flash.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/pplx-decider-flash.json
- ScaleDown: grade D, 48.6/100, rank #917 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scaledown.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scaledown.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
- Best document parsing, OCR and extraction APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/document-extraction/index.md
- All 128 documents comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/document-extraction/index.md

## Which one, for what

### pplx-decider-flash (B)

Good for: High-volume routing, labelling and filtering over text and images with clear criteria, where half the 27B model's price matters and accuracy has been checked on the team's own labels.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 66 against 20
- Schema & documentation, 89 against 69
- Agent ergonomics, 81 against 76
- Security & auth, 68 against 48
- Maintenance & community, 67 against 56
- Transparency & trust, 71 against 54

Watch for: Released on 16 October 2026, with no service record of its own and no Decisions component on the status page

### ScaleDown (D)

Good for: Cheap, high-volume labelling, routing and yes or no checks where a probability is more useful than prose, and for pulling described fields with offsets from text, images or PDFs.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 25

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: No status page, no published rate limits and no SLA outside enterprise contracts


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | pplx-decider-flash | ScaleDown | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 66 | 20 | pplx-decider-flash +46 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 89 | 69 | pplx-decider-flash +20 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 81 | 76 | pplx-decider-flash +5 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 68 | 48 | pplx-decider-flash +20 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 25 | 40 | ScaleDown +15 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 67 | 56 | pplx-decider-flash +11 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 71 | 54 | pplx-decider-flash +17 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **67.9 · B** | **48.6 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | pplx-decider-flash | ScaleDown |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Perplexity | Carbon ScaleDown, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.perplexity.ai/v1/decisions` | `https://api.scaledown.xyz` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| Price for decision models | free | not published |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 for the published weights and inference code. The hosted Decisions API is a proprietary service | Proprietary hosted models under ScaleDown's Terms of Service. The langchain-scaledown integration is MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-16 | 2026-10-14 |
| Terms last updated |  | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models |  | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | none | 0 stars |
| Agent reviews | 3.3/5 (4) | none |

## Verdicts

**pplx-decider-flash.** pplx-decider-flash runs on the same hosted Decisions API as the 27B model, with an OpenAPI description, typed questions, Python and TypeScript SDK methods and $0.01 per million input tokens, and its weights are public under Apache-2.0. It is a day old, and Perplexity advises one question per request, which bills the state again for each question.

**ScaleDown.** Classify answers Jev-shaped `choice`, `noul` and `score` questions with probabilities, and Extract returns values with confidences and character offsets, at $0.05 per million input tokens with output free. There is no status page, no published rate limit and no public changelog, and the site's compliance claims contradict each other.

## Before you call either

### pplx-decider-flash

1. Send `Authorization: Bearer` with `model` set to `pplx-decider-flash-v1.2`. A key in `x-api-key` returns 401.
2. Send one question per request by default. Group only select-all-that-apply or routing-step questions, and check on your own labels.
3. Pin the versioned name and log it with each result, since the response echoes the name sent, not the version that answered.
4. Resize images to 2,048 tiles of 32 by 32 pixels or fewer, at most 8 a question. Larger images end in a 504 after about a minute.
5. Compare it with `pplx-decider-v1.2` on a labelled sample at your thresholds before choosing it.

### ScaleDown

1. Send several questions about one item in one `/v1/scaledown` call. Each becomes its own Classify call and the usage is summed
2. Pin `classify-1`, `extract-1` or `summarize-1` once you've tuned thresholds on your own labelled cases
3. Set `context_chars` to 0 and use `top_n` on Extract unless you need the 500 characters of context each side
4. Set `reasoning: false` on /classify when you only need the label. The reasoning call bills its input at 2x
5. Back off and retry on 429, 502 and 504. No limits are published and calls have no side effects

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, pplx-decider-flash or ScaleDown?

pplx-decider-flash scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against ScaleDown's 48.6 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. ScaleDown leads on payments & pricing.

### Do pplx-decider-flash and ScaleDown need an API key?

Both need an API key.

### Can an agent call pplx-decider-flash and ScaleDown without installing anything?

Yes. pplx-decider-flash has a hosted endpoint at https://api.perplexity.ai/v1/decisions and ScaleDown at https://api.scaledown.xyz.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with pplx-decider-flash or ScaleDown

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

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