ELYZA vs Sakana AI vs rinna
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
ELYZA
Japanese-first LLMs and a no-code AI app builder, from a KDDI subsidia...
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rinna
Japan's open-weight AI catalog — commercial API discontinued in 2026
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| RECATOOLS Score | 7.4 / 10 | 7.8 / 10 | 5 / 10 |
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| Value for money | |||
| Ease of use | |||
| ASEAN readiness | |||
| API quality | |||
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium | Freemium |
| Free tier | Open-weight models free to download on Hugging Face (Llama 2, Llama 3 or Apache 2.0 licences); no free ELYZA Works plan | Sakana Chat is free; research models open-sourced on Hugging Face / GitHub | Open-weight models free via HuggingFace (MIT/Apache 2.0); developer API has a free access tier |
| Paid from | ¥980 per account a month before tax (ELYZA Works Light, minimum 20 accounts) | ¥9,800 per run (¥98 a credit) or ¥150,000/month (Marlin Pro) | Tamashiru Custom enterprise service — contact sales for pricing |
| Has API | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Open source | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Users | ~110K users in 11 days at ELYZA Pencil launch (2022); enterprise B2B focus since | ~300 beta users (Marlin); broader via free Sakana Chat | Dozens of open-weight models; over 4.5M cumulative HuggingFace downloads (rinna, as of Dec 2023) |
| Founded | 2018 | 2023 | 2020 |
| Maker | KDDI Corporation | Independent (Sakana AI, Inc.) | Independent (formerly part of Microsoft Japan's AI & Research division) |
| Verdict | ELYZA is one of Japan's more credible domestic LLM developers: open-weight Japanese models, including Apache 2.0 reasoning models released in October 2026, a 70B model selected for the Digital Agency's government AI tria... |
Sakana is one of the more technically credible AI labs outside the US and China — its AI Scientist produced what it calls the first fully AI-generated paper to pass peer review, at an ICLR 2025 workshop, and the Darwin G... |
Note: rinna's commercial B2B products (Developers API, Tamashiru Custom, Koemotion TTS) were discontinued in 2026; the company's live business is now its AI Rinna entertainment persona.rinna built one of the de... |
| Full review → | Directory listing → | Directory listing → |
Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.