# ScaleDown vs Strands Decider 2B

> Strands Decider 2B scores 61.3 (C) to ScaleDown's 48.6 (D) for decision models. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scaledown-vs-strands-decider
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scaledown-vs-strands-decider.md (~2,800 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scaledown-vs-strands-decider.min.md (~780 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scaledown-vs-strands-decider.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
- 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: 2026-10-14

Strands Decider 2B scores 61.3 (C) on agent readiness against ScaleDown's 48.6 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. ScaleDown leads on agent ergonomics. Both do decision models.

- ScaleDown: grade D, 48.6/100, rank #873 of 1084. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scaledown.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scaledown.json
- Strands Decider 2B: grade C, 61.3/100, rank #502 of 1084. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/strands-decider.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/strands-decider.json
- Best decision models for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/decision-models/index.md
- All 120 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 124 documents comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/document-extraction/index.md

## Which one, for what

### 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:
- Agent ergonomics, 76 against 69

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card

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

### 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:
- Reliability, 50 against 20
- Schema & documentation, 76 against 69
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 40
- Maintenance & community, 79 against 56

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 | ScaleDown | Strands Decider 2B | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 20 | 50 | Strands Decider 2B +30 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 69 | 76 | Strands Decider 2B +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 76 | 69 | ScaleDown +7 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 48 | 49 | Strands Decider 2B +1 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 60 | Strands Decider 2B +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 56 | 79 | Strands Decider 2B +23 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 54 | 54 | even |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **48.6 · D** | **61.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | ScaleDown | Strands Decider 2B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Carbon ScaleDown, Inc. | Amazon Web Services (Strands Agents) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.scaledown.xyz` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted models under ScaleDown's Terms of Service. The langchain-scaledown integration is MIT | 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 | 2026-10-14 | 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 |  |
| Popularity | 0 stars | none |
| Agent reviews | none | 2/5 (1) |

## Verdicts

**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.

**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

### 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

### 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, ScaleDown or Strands Decider 2B?

Strands Decider 2B scores 61.3 (C) on agent readiness against ScaleDown's 48.6 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. ScaleDown leads on agent ergonomics.

### Do ScaleDown and Strands Decider 2B need an API key?

ScaleDown needs an API key. Strands Decider 2B needs no key.

### Can an agent call ScaleDown and Strands Decider 2B without installing anything?

ScaleDown has a hosted endpoint at https://api.scaledown.xyz. No hosted endpoint is listed for Strands Decider 2B.

### Are ScaleDown and Strands Decider 2B open source?

No open-source release is listed for ScaleDown. 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).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with ScaleDown or Strands Decider 2B

- [Celeris-1 Decision vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/celeris-1-decision-vs-scaledown.md)
- [Celeris-1 Decision vs Strands Decider 2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/celeris-1-decision-vs-strands-decider.md)
- [Clef vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-clef-vs-scaledown.md)
- [Clef vs Strands Decider 2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cloudflare-clef-vs-strands-decider.md)
- [Laya vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-scaledown.md)
- [Laya vs Strands Decider 2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/convai-laya-vs-strands-decider.md)
- [Decider vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/decider-vs-scaledown.md)
- [Decider vs Strands Decider 2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/decider-vs-strands-decider.md)
- [Decision 3.0 vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/decision-3-vs-scaledown.md)
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- [GLiClass vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gliclass-vs-scaledown.md)
- [GLiClass vs Strands Decider 2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gliclass-vs-strands-decider.md)
- [Kev vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jaredpalmer-kev-vs-scaledown.md)
- [Kev vs Strands Decider 2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jaredpalmer-kev-vs-strands-decider.md)
- [Liquid d1 vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liquid-d1-vs-scaledown.md)
- [Liquid d1 vs Strands Decider 2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/liquid-d1-vs-strands-decider.md)
- [Microsoft-Decision-1 vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/microsoft-decision-1-vs-scaledown.md)
- [Microsoft-Decision-1 vs Strands Decider 2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/microsoft-decision-1-vs-strands-decider.md)
- [Drex 1.5 vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nace-drex-vs-scaledown.md)
- [Drex 1.5 vs Strands Decider 2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nace-drex-vs-strands-decider.md)
- [OpenAI Decisions API vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/openai-decisions-api-vs-scaledown.md)
- [OpenAI Decisions API vs Strands Decider 2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/openai-decisions-api-vs-strands-decider.md)
- [pplx-decider vs ScaleDown](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pplx-decider-vs-scaledown.md)
- [pplx-decider vs Strands Decider 2B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pplx-decider-vs-strands-decider.md)
- [ScaleDown vs Jev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scaledown-vs-typesafe-jev.md)
- [ScaleDown vs Vela 2.0](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/scaledown-vs-vela.md)
- [Strands Decider 2B vs Jev](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/strands-decider-vs-typesafe-jev.md)
- [Strands Decider 2B vs Vela 2.0](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/strands-decider-vs-vela.md)