The best AI decision models in 2026
The best AI decision models right now are Perplexity Decider (pplx-decider), d3-turbo (vLLM Semantic Router) and d3 (vLLM Semantic Router), out of 7 we have reviewed. Each is ranked by our rating, with its price, our verdict and who it suits.
Updated Oct 23, 2026 · Ranked from our reviews · How we review
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A decision model you can download, read images with and run for under half the price of Jev, scoring well above Jev on tests nobody can train on.
Best for: Teams that want strong typed decisions over text and images, either through a cheap API or on their own GPUs.
Price: API: pplx-decider-v1.2 $0.02 and Flash $0.01 per 1M input tokens; output free, no per-request fee. Weights free under Apache 2.0.
Read our Perplexity Decider (pplx-decider) review4.5/5 - 2
d3-turbo earns its place when one input faces many questions, and costs more than d3-flash when it faces only one.
Best for: Teams with GPUs who ask many yes/no, choice or location questions of the same text, image or video and want open weights.
Price: Free weights under Apache 2.0. No paid hosted API; a free public API with logging and no SLA.
Read our d3-turbo (vLLM Semantic Router) review4.1/5 - 3
Strong, open and easy to serve on vLLM, but nine days after launch its own d3-turbo made it the version to migrate from.
Best for: Teams already running vLLM who want an open decision model for text, image or video checks on their own GPUs and have validated against this checkpoint.
Price: Free weights under Apache 2.0. No paid hosted API; the free public demo now serves d3-turbo.
Read our d3 (vLLM Semantic Router) review4.0/5 - 4
Jev turned typed decisions into a product, and open models have since passed it on both score and price.
Best for: Teams that want a hosted, low-cost API for text routing, triage and yes/no gates without running their own GPUs.
Price: $0.042 per 1M input tokens ($42 per billion); output tokens are free. Same price at long context. Enterprise limits through sales.
Read our Jev review3.8/5 - 5
Clef makes sense inside a Cloudflare Worker and almost nowhere else: Perplexity's Decider scores higher, reads images too and costs a twelfth as much.
Best for: Teams already running on Cloudflare Workers who want typed decisions about images next to their code and value data terms over leaderboard rank.
Price: Workers AI: $0.24 per 1M input tokens (images count as input, at most 1,024 tokens each); output free. Weights free under Apache 2.0.
Read our Clef review3.6/5 - 6
GLiNER2.5-Decide is a fast, honest label classifier that performs well on Fastino's tasks and far behind on everyone else's.
Best for: Engineers who need cheap, CPU-only intent routing, moderation or spam decisions and can fine-tune on their own labels.
Price: Free weights and library under Apache 2.0. Fastino's hosted fine-tuning agent is a separate product.
Read our GLiNER2.5-Decide review3.6/5 - 7
Very fast and genuinely open, but close to guessing on hard decisions out of the box: a base to fine-tune, not a Jev replacement.
Best for: Teams with their own labelled decision data who want a tiny, self-hosted model to fine-tune for fast routing or guardrails.
Price: Free weights and Python package under Apache 2.0. No hosted paid API; you run it yourself.
Read our Laya review3.4/5