rinna vs ELYZA vs Sakana AI
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
rinna
Japan's open-weight AI catalog — commercial API discontinued in 2026
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ELYZA
Japan's Japanese-first LLM — from U Tokyo's Matsuo Lab, backed by KDDI
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| RECATOOLS Score | 5 / 10 | 7.4 / 10 | 7.8 / 10 |
| Capability | |||
| Value for money | |||
| Ease of use | |||
| ASEAN readiness | |||
| API quality | |||
| Pricing | Freemium | Enterprise | Freemium |
| Free tier | Open-weight models free via HuggingFace (MIT/Apache 2.0); developer API has a free access tier | Free demo ended May 2026; open-weight models freely downloadable on Hugging Face | Sakana Chat is free; research models open-sourced on Hugging Face / GitHub |
| Paid from | Tamashiru Custom enterprise service — contact sales for pricing | Enterprise contract only — no public pricing; contact sales via elyza.ai | Sakana Marlin from ¥9,800/run or ¥150,000/month (~$1,000/mo) |
| Has API | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Open source | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Users | Dozens of open-weight models; over 4.5M cumulative HuggingFace downloads (rinna, as of Dec 2023) | ~110K users in 11 days at ELYZA Pencil launch (2022); enterprise B2B focus since | ~300 beta users (Marlin); broader via free Sakana Chat |
| Founded | 2020 | 2018 | 2023 |
| Maker | Independent (formerly part of Microsoft Japan's AI & Research division) | KDDI Corporation | Independent (Sakana AI, Inc.) |
| Verdict | 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... |
ELYZA has the cleanest academic-to-enterprise pipeline among Japan's domestic LLM shops: University of Tokyo Matsuo Lab research, a 2024 KDDI majority buy-in (53.4% combined stake), and production deployments that aren't... |
Sakana is one of the more technically credible AI labs outside the US and China -- its AI Scientist paper was the first fully AI-generated research to pass peer review, and the Darwin Godel Machine demonstrated a model t... |
| Full review → | Full review → | Full review → |
Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.