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
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
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
| Category | Weight this run | pplx-decider | Strands Decider 2B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 61 | 50 | pplx-decider +11 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 90 | 76 | pplx-decider +14 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 76 | 69 | pplx-decider +7 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 61 | 49 | pplx-decider +12 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 25 | 60 | Strands Decider 2B +35 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 62 | 79 | Strands Decider 2B +17 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 52 | 54 | Strands Decider 2B +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 62.9 · B | 61.3 · C |
Facts side by side
| Fact | pplx-decider | Strands Decider 2B |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Perplexity | Amazon Web Services (Strands Agents) |
| 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. The hosted Decisions API is a proprietary service | 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 | 2026-10-05 | 2026-10-05 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | no document linked |
| 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 | |
| Agent reviews | none | 2/5 (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
- Send
Authorization: Bearer. A key inx-api-keyreturns 401 on this endpoint. - Set
modelon every request. A missing or unknown model returns 400, and the guide shows a-latestname rejected. - 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.
- Check the HTTP status before parsing an error. 404 and 405 have empty bodies, 504 can be HTML, and
error.codechanges type. - For the weights, use the repository's
autojevcode. The card says default causal inference does not reproduce the evaluated setup.
Strands Decider 2B
- Pin the checkpoint by its full name, such as
StrandsAgents/strands-decider-2B-hobson-v21, since each version is a separate Hugging Face repository - Start the server with
--strict-windowwhen a cut state would make an answer wrong. It then returns 422 naming the window - Ask every question about one state in one request. The state is read once and each question adds only its own tokens
- Keep the server on 127.0.0.1 or put an authenticating proxy in front. It has no key option
- 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
- Celeris-1 Decision vs pplx-decider
- Celeris-1 Decision vs Strands Decider 2B
- Clef vs pplx-decider
- Clef vs Strands Decider 2B
- Laya vs pplx-decider
- Laya vs Strands Decider 2B
- Decider vs pplx-decider
- Decider vs Strands Decider 2B
- GLiClass vs pplx-decider
- GLiClass vs Strands Decider 2B
- Kev vs pplx-decider
- Kev vs Strands Decider 2B
- Liquid d1 vs pplx-decider
- Liquid d1 vs Strands Decider 2B
- OpenAI Decisions API vs pplx-decider
- OpenAI Decisions API vs Strands Decider 2B
- pplx-decider vs Jev
- pplx-decider vs Vela 2.0
- Strands Decider 2B vs Jev
- Strands Decider 2B vs Vela 2.0
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/pplx-decider-vs-strands-decider.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/pplx-decider.json·/api/v1/tools/strands-decider.json - From a terminal
anchor compare pplx-decider strands-decider(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "pplx-decider", "b": "strands-decider"}at/mcp, no key