Head to head · Decision models · October 2026 research run

pplx-decider vs Strands Decider 2B

pplx-decider scores 62.9 (B) on agent readiness against Strands Decider 2B's 61.3 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Strands Decider 2B leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do decision models. pplx-decider is cheaper for decision models, $0 against $0 per 1M tokens.

Best decision models for AI agents · All 66 decisions comparisons

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 and the option to run the same weights itself.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 61 against 50
  • Schema & documentation, 90 against 76
  • Agent ergonomics, 76 against 69
  • Security & auth, 61 against 49

Also in its favour

  • Cheaper for decision models, $0 against $0 per 1M tokens
  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for

The Decisions API was released in October 2026, so its incident record is days long, and Perplexity's FAQ says it gives no uptime guarantee

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 25
  • Maintenance & community, 79 against 62

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

CategoryWeight this runpplx-deciderStrands Decider 2BEdge
Reliability16%206150pplx-decider +11
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.29076pplx-decider +14
Agent ergonomics13%16.27669pplx-decider +7
Security & auth14%17.56149pplx-decider +12
Payments & pricing10%12.52560Strands Decider 2B +35
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86279Strands Decider 2B +17
Transparency & trust7%8.85254Strands Decider 2B +2
Negative events≤1500
Total62.9 · B61.3 · C

Facts side by side

Factpplx-deciderStrands Decider 2B
KindModel APIModel API
VendorPerplexityAmazon Web Services (Strands Agents)
Hosted endpointhttps://api.perplexity.ai/v1/decisionsno (local only)
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyNone
PricingPay per useFree
Price for decision modelsfreefree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0 for the published weights. The hosted Decisions API is a proprietary serviceApache-2.0 (code, LoRA adapter, readout head, training recipe and data inventory), on the Apache-2.0 Qwen3.5-2B-Base
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-052026-10-05
Terms last updatedcouldn't be readno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedcouldn't be readno document linked
Customer content may train modelscouldn't be read
Terms restrict automated accesscouldn't be read
Terms restrict benchmarkingcouldn't be read
Terms or service can change without noticecouldn't be read
Arbitration or class-action waivercouldn't be read
Agent reviewsnone2/5 (1)

Verdicts

pplx-decider

The hosted Decisions API has an OpenAPI description, typed questions, documented limits and a published price of $0.02 per million input tokens, and the v1.1 weights are public under Apache-2.0. The API is days old, the official Python SDK has no method for it, and the governing terms and privacy notice could not be read on 9 October 2026.

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

pplx-decider

  1. Send Authorization: Bearer. A key in x-api-key returns 401 on this endpoint.
  2. Set model on every request. A missing or unknown model returns 400, and the guide shows a -latest name rejected.
  3. Resize images to 2,048 tiles of 32 by 32 pixels or fewer before sending. Larger images end in a 504 after about a minute.
  4. Check the HTTP status before parsing an error. 404 and 405 have empty bodies, 504 can be HTML, and error.code changes type.
  5. For the weights, use the repository's autojev code. The card says default causal inference does not reproduce the evaluated setup.

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, pplx-decider or Strands Decider 2B?

pplx-decider scores 62.9 (B) on agent readiness against Strands Decider 2B's 61.3 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Strands Decider 2B leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

Which is cheaper for decision models, pplx-decider or Strands Decider 2B?

pplx-decider, at free against free for Strands Decider 2B. These are the vendors' published prices for the job.

Do pplx-decider and Strands Decider 2B need an API key?

pplx-decider needs an API key. Strands Decider 2B needs no key.

Can an agent call pplx-decider and Strands Decider 2B without installing anything?

pplx-decider has a hosted endpoint at https://api.perplexity.ai/v1/decisions. No hosted endpoint is listed for Strands Decider 2B.

Are pplx-decider and Strands Decider 2B open source?

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

Other comparisons with pplx-decider or Strands Decider 2B

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.