# pplx-decider-flash vs Vela 2.0

> pplx-decider-flash scores 67.9 (B) to Vela 2.0's 66.5 (B) for decision models. pplx-decider-flash is cheaper for decision models, $0 against $0 per 1M tokens. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pplx-decider-flash-vs-vela
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pplx-decider-flash-vs-vela.md (~3,100 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pplx-decider-flash-vs-vela.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pplx-decider-flash-vs-vela.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

pplx-decider-flash scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Vela 2.0's 66.5 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Vela 2.0 leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do decision models. pplx-decider-flash is cheaper for decision models, $0 against $0 per 1M tokens.

- 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
- Vela 2.0: grade B, 66.5/100, rank #313 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/vela.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/vela.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

### 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 57
- Schema & documentation, 89 against 78
- Security & auth, 68 against 60
- Transparency & trust, 71 against 48

Also in its favour:
- Cheaper for decision models, $0 against $0 per 1M tokens
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

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

### 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:
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 25
- Maintenance & community, 84 against 67

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Open source
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 4.3 against 3.3 out of 5

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 | pplx-decider-flash | Vela 2.0 | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 66 | 57 | pplx-decider-flash +9 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 89 | 78 | pplx-decider-flash +11 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 81 | 79 | pplx-decider-flash +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 68 | 60 | pplx-decider-flash +8 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 25 | 60 | Vela 2.0 +35 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 67 | 84 | Vela 2.0 +17 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 71 | 48 | pplx-decider-flash +23 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **67.9 · B** | **66.5 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | pplx-decider-flash | Vela 2.0 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Perplexity | vLLM Semantic Router project and KR Labs |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.perplexity.ai/v1/decisions` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Free |
| Price for decision models | free | free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 for the published weights and inference code. The hosted Decisions API is a proprietary service | 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 | 2026-10-16 | 2026-10-06 |
| Terms last updated |  | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | 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 | none | 6.1k stars |
| Agent reviews | 3.3/5 (4) | 4.3/5 (4) |

## 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.

**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

### 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.

### Vela 2.0

1. Pin a commit hash with `revision=` when loading from the Hub. The repositories have no tags and `main` has changed since launch
2. Send the served name in `model`, for example `vllm-sr/Vela-2.0-4B`. The bundled server answers 422 to any other name
3. Name span questions `pii`, `halu` or `toxic`, or set `"head": "router"`, to get the trained router head. Other labels go to the broad head
4. 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
5. Set `VELA2_API_KEY` before binding the bundled server beyond 127.0.0.1, and keep the model runtime on a trusted network

## Tutorials

- [Find contact details in a message with Vela](https://www.anchorterminal.com/tutorials/vela/), for Vela 2.0

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, pplx-decider-flash or Vela 2.0?

pplx-decider-flash scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Vela 2.0's 66.5 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Vela 2.0 leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

### Which is cheaper for decision models, pplx-decider-flash or Vela 2.0?

pplx-decider-flash, at free against free for Vela 2.0. These are the vendors' published prices for the job.

### Do pplx-decider-flash and Vela 2.0 need an API key?

pplx-decider-flash needs an API key. Vela 2.0 needs no key.

### Can an agent call pplx-decider-flash and Vela 2.0 without installing anything?

pplx-decider-flash has a hosted endpoint at https://api.perplexity.ai/v1/decisions. No hosted endpoint is listed for Vela 2.0.

### Are pplx-decider-flash and Vela 2.0 open source?

No open-source release is listed for pplx-decider-flash. 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).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with pplx-decider-flash or Vela 2.0

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

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