# pplx-decider vs kettei

> pplx-decider scores 68.1 (B) to kettei's 58.3 (C) for decision models. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pplx-decider-vs-sqwish-kettei
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pplx-decider-vs-sqwish-kettei.md (~2,900 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pplx-decider-vs-sqwish-kettei.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pplx-decider-vs-sqwish-kettei.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 scores 68.1 (B) on agent readiness against kettei's 58.3 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. kettei leads on agent ergonomics and payments & pricing. Both do decision models.

- pplx-decider: grade B, 68.1/100, rank #249 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/pplx-decider.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/pplx-decider.json
- kettei: grade C, 58.3/100, rank #640 of 1133. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/sqwish-kettei.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/sqwish-kettei.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 (B)

Good for: High-volume classification, routing and rubric scoring over text and images where a team wants a low hosted price, several related questions per item and the option to run the same weights itself.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 66 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 65 against 57
- Transparency & trust, 71 against 51

Watch for: Requests naming `pplx-decider-v1.1-27b` or `pplx-decider-v1-27b` are answered by v1.2 since 16 October 2026, with no notice period

### kettei (C)

Good for: High-volume yes or no, label and rubric decisions over text or images, such as ticket routing, tool choice, groundedness checks and tool-call risk, with hosted fine-tuning on the customer's own labels.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 89 against 83
- Payments & pricing, 35 against 25

Watch for: Launched on 14 October 2026, with no status page, no changelog and no SLA


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | pplx-decider | kettei | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 66 | 30 | pplx-decider +36 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 89 | 87 | pplx-decider +2 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 83 | 89 | kettei +6 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 68 | 68 | even |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 25 | 35 | kettei +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 65 | 57 | pplx-decider +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 71 | 51 | pplx-decider +20 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **68.1 · B** | **58.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | pplx-decider | kettei |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Perplexity | Sqwish Labs |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.perplexity.ai/v1/decisions` | `https://api.sqwish.ai/v1/decide` |
| 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 and API. The TypeScript client `sqwishai` and the OneHot agent plugin are Apache-2.0. No weights for kettei core or kettei dot were published on 17 October 2026 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-16 | 2026-10-15 |
| Terms last updated |  |  |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read |  |
| 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 | 1.2k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (4) | 3.8/5 (4) |

## Verdicts

**pplx-decider.** The hosted Decisions API now serves v1.2, with an OpenAPI description, typed questions, Python and TypeScript SDK methods and $0.02 per million input tokens, and the weights are public under Apache-2.0. Requests naming v1.1 or v1 are now answered by v1.2 with no notice period, and the response does not say which version answered.

**kettei.** OneHot returns probabilities for up to 128 typed questions a call at $0.02 to $0.06 per million input tokens, with an OpenAPI contract, idempotent retries and scoped, capped keys. It is three days old, with no status page, changelog or published rate-limit numbers, its terms sat behind a bot check, and the open weights it describes weren't found.

## Before you call either

### pplx-decider

1. Send `Authorization: Bearer`. A key in `x-api-key` returns 401 on this endpoint.
2. Pin `pplx-decider-v1.2` and log it with each result. Old names and aliases route to newer versions, and the response echoes the name sent.
3. Revalidate thresholds set on v1.1. The v1.2 card says it gives different answers to v1.1-style requests.
4. Group questions that are facets of one decision. Send independent candidates, such as documents or tools, in separate requests.
5. 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.
6. For the weights, use the repository's `pplx_decider` package. The card says default causal inference does not reproduce the checkpoint.

### kettei

1. Send `context` and `decisions` to `POST https://api.sqwish.ai/v1/decide` with a bearer key. Leaving out `model` gets `kettei-core`, which reads text only
2. Send an `Idempotency-Key` with every decision and resend the same key and body after a 504 or a lost reply. Replays aren't charged
3. Branch on `error.code` and `error.retryable`, not the status. Wait for `Retry-After` on 429 and retryable 503s
4. Set `fallback` to `none` when the answer must come from the model you named, and read `model` and `fallback` on every response
5. Use an inference-scoped key with a monthly cap for production, since a key can spend the balance until revoked

## Tutorials

- [Find defect reports with Perplexity Decisions](https://www.anchorterminal.com/tutorials/pplx-decider/), for pplx-decider

## Questions

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

pplx-decider scores 68.1 (B) on agent readiness against kettei's 58.3 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. kettei leads on agent ergonomics and payments & pricing.

### Do pplx-decider and kettei need an API key?

Both need an API key.

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

Yes. pplx-decider has a hosted endpoint at https://api.perplexity.ai/v1/decisions and kettei at https://api.sqwish.ai/v1/decide.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with pplx-decider or kettei

- [Celeris-1 Decision vs pplx-decider](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/celeris-1-decision-vs-pplx-decider.md)
- [Celeris-1 Decision vs kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/celeris-1-decision-vs-sqwish-kettei.md)
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- [Microsoft-Decision-1 vs kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/microsoft-decision-1-vs-sqwish-kettei.md)
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- [pplx-decider vs pplx-decider-flash](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pplx-decider-vs-pplx-decider-flash.md)
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- [ScaleDown vs kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scaledown-vs-sqwish-kettei.md)
- [SPEV vs kettei](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sprag-spev-vs-sqwish-kettei.md)
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- [kettei vs Vela 2.0](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/sqwish-kettei-vs-vela.md)

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