{ "data": { "a": { "slug": "axolotl", "name": "Axolotl", "vendor": "Axolotl AI", "vendorUrl": "https://axolotl.ai", "kind": "framework", "category": "fine-tuning", "summary": "Open-source command-line tool and Python package for fine-tuning open language models from one YAML config, covering LoRA, QLoRA, full fine-tuning, preference tuning and GRPO on the owner's GPUs.", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/axolotl", "markdownUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/axolotl.md", "slimMarkdownUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/axolotl.min.md", "jsonUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/axolotl.json", "repo": "https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl", "license": "Apache-2.0", "transports": [], "packages": [ { "registry": "pypi", "name": "axolotl" }, { "registry": "oci", "name": "axolotlai/axolotl" } ], "auth": "none", "authNotes": "No account or key of its own. Gated models and Hub uploads use the owner's Hugging Face token, and Weights \u0026 Biases, MLflow or Trackio logging uses those services' own credentials from the environment.", "pricing": "free", "pricingNotes": "Free and Apache-2.0, with no price list or hosted plan on axolotl.ai. The owner pays for the GPU, whether local, a rented machine or Hugging Face Jobs billed by the minute. Dedicated support is by email with no published price.", "priceSummary": "Free · OSS", "where": "library", "x402": { "level": "no", "evidence": "No x402, MPP or L402 in the docs or the source (checked 2026-10-08).", "endpoints": [] }, "toolCount": null, "popularity": { "githubStars": 12541, "npmWeekly": null, "pypiWeekly": 2124, "asOf": "2026-10-08" }, "docsUrl": "https://docs.axolotl.ai/", "capabilities": [ "finetune.sft", "finetune.lora", "finetune.preference", "finetune.rl", "finetune.export" ], "tags": [ "open-source", "framework", "self-hosted", "local", "free", "python", "docker", "open-weights" ], "lastRelease": "2026-09-30", "graded": true, "anchor": { "graded": true, "score": 64.8, "grade": "B", "agentReady": false, "rank": 307, "ranked": true, "rankOf": 842, "categoryRank": 2, "methodology": "0.4", "run": "2026-10-01", "scores": { "ergonomics": 60, "maintenance": 88, "payments": 60, "reliability": 64, "schema": 80, "security": 52, "transparency": 56 }, "pending": [ "performance", "tasks" ], "assessment": { "confidence": "medium", "date": "2026-10-08" }, "negative": 0, "verdict": "Axolotl runs a whole fine-tuning job from one YAML file and ships a JSON Schema of its config plus bundled agent docs. It is 0.x software with telemetry on by default, no terms or privacy policy, and the owner supplies the GPU.", "bestFor": "A team that wants a repeatable, config-driven fine-tune of an open model on its own or rented GPUs, including multi-GPU and multi-node runs.", "strengths": [ "Apache-2.0, free, and the weights stay on the owner's hardware", "`axolotl config-schema` prints the full config as JSON Schema, and `axolotl agent-docs` prints bundled Markdown references by topic", "SFT, LoRA, QLoRA, DPO, IPO, KTO, ORPO, GRPO and reward modelling from one config format", "Three releases in the 90 days to 8 October 2026, each with a Deprecations section naming removed options", "Telemetry is documented field by field and `AXOLOTL_DO_NOT_TRACK=1` turns it off" ], "weaknesses": [ "Telemetry to PostHog is on by default and delays training start by 10 seconds until the variable is set either way", "No terms of service, privacy policy, legal entity or security.txt found on axolotl.ai", "Version 0.20.0, with removals in minor releases (FSDP1 in 0.20.0, `relora_steps` renamed in 0.17.0 with no shim)", "Three of the last six push runs of the Tests workflow on main passed, and the nightly run against upstream failed on 7 and 8 October 2026", "Not a hosted service, so there is no job API, status page or SLA" ], "agentNotes": [ "Set `AXOLOTL_DO_NOT_TRACK=1` before any command, or training waits 10 seconds and sends usage events to PostHog", "Run `axolotl agent-docs` and `axolotl config-schema --field \u003cname\u003e` before writing a config; both work offline from the installed package", "Install torch first, then `uv pip install --no-build-isolation axolotl[deepspeed]`, on Python 3.12 or later with PyTorch 2.13 or later", "Take example configs from the same release tag as the installed version; minor releases remove and rename config keys", "Resume an interrupted run with `axolotl train config.yml --resume-from-checkpoint \u003cpath\u003e`, then `axolotl merge-lora` and `axolotl export` only when shipping" ], "metrics": { "kind": "local", "measured": false }, "reviewCount": 0, "avgRating": 0, "history": [ { "basis": "public evidence", "confidence": "medium", "grade": "B", "methodology": "0.4", "pending": [ "performance", "tasks" ], "run": "2026-10-01", "runLabel": "October 2026 research run", "score": 64.8 } ], "editorialScores": { "ergonomics": 60, "maintenance": 88, "payments": 60, "reliability": 64, "schema": 80, "security": 52, "transparency": 75 }, "provenanceScore": 36 }, "connect": { "install": "uv pip install torch==2.14.0 torchvision \u0026\u0026 uv pip install --no-build-isolation axolotl[deepspeed] # or: docker run --gpus '\"all\"' --ipc=host --rm -it axolotlai/axolotl:main-latest", "headless": { "command": "axolotl train config.yml", "env": { "AXOLOTL_DO_NOT_TRACK": "1" } } }, "letme": { "capability": "https://letme.dev/finetune.sft", "tool": "https://letme.dev/axolotl" }, "area": "models", "provenance": { "legalEntity": "", "domain": "axolotl.ai", "domainRegistered": "2022-08-02", "endpointOnVendorDomain": null, "terms": "", "privacy": "", "statusPage": "", "changelog": "https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/releases", "securityTxt": "none", "checked": "2026-10-08", "notes": [ "No legal entity is named on axolotl.ai, in the docs or in the repository. The GitHub organisation is axolotl-ai-cloud and the citation file credits the Axolotl maintainers and contributors.", "The vendor publishes no terms of service or privacy policy (axolotl.ai/terms and /privacy return 404), so both links are left out. The telemetry page is the only data-handling statement.", "Local software has no endpoint to check against the domain.", "axolotl.ai/.well-known/security.txt and /security.txt return 404. The repository's `.github/SECURITY.md` gives an email address for reports.", "RDAP shows axolotl.ai registered on 2 August 2022 and transferred on 11 April 2024." ], "score": 36 }, "pageJsonUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/axolotl.json" }, "answer": "Axolotl and Vertex AI Gemini tuning score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 64.8 (B) and 64.2 (B). Vertex AI Gemini tuning leads on security \u0026 auth and transparency \u0026 trust.", "b": { "slug": "vertex-ai-tuning", "name": "Vertex AI Gemini tuning", "vendor": "Google Cloud", "vendorUrl": "https://cloud.google.com", "kind": "http-api", "category": "fine-tuning", "summary": "Supervised, preference and reinforcement tuning of Gemini, plus supervised tuning of Gemma, Llama and Qwen, on Google Cloud's Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform (the platform formerly called Vertex AI).", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/vertex-ai-tuning", "markdownUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/vertex-ai-tuning.md", "slimMarkdownUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/vertex-ai-tuning.min.md", "jsonUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/vertex-ai-tuning.json", "repo": "https://github.com/googleapis/python-genai", "license": "Apache-2.0 (SDK)", "transports": [ "http" ], "remoteUrl": "https://us-central1-aiplatform.googleapis.com/v1", "packages": [ { "registry": "pypi", "name": "google-genai" } ], "auth": "oauth", "authNotes": "OAuth 2.0 bearer token from a service account or `gcloud auth print-access-token` on a project with billing and the platform API turned on. Training data comes from a Cloud Storage URI, so the caller also needs read access to the bucket. Tuning is a Vertex-only feature. The SDK says tuning is supported only on the enterprise platform, not the Gemini Developer API.", "pricing": "usage", "pricingNotes": "Per training token, where training tokens = dataset tokens x epochs. Gemini 3.5 Flash $10 per 1M for supervised or reinforcement learning fine-tuning (listed as $0.01 per 1,000), Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite $3, Gemini 2.5 Pro $25, Gemini 2.5 Flash $5 for supervised or preference tuning, Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite $1.50. Open models run from Gemma 3 at $0.47 (1B) to $6.83 (27B), Llama 3.1 8B $0.67, Llama 3.3 70B $6.72, Llama 4 Scout $5.77, Qwen 3 4B $1.35 to Qwen 3 32B $6.57. From Gemini 3 on, a tuned model endpoint costs 1.5x the base model's prediction price; older Gemini tuned models cost the same as base (https://cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise-agent-platform/generative-ai/pricing).", "priceSummary": "Pay per use", "where": "hosted", "x402": { "level": "no", "endpoints": [] }, "toolCount": null, "popularity": { "githubStars": 3900, "npmWeekly": null, "pypiWeekly": 32928433, "asOf": "2026-09-30" }, "docsUrl": "https://docs.cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise-agent-platform/models/tuning", "capabilities": [ "finetune.sft", "finetune.preference", "finetune.rl", "finetune.lora" ], "tags": [ "hosted", "usage-priced", "closed-source", "card-required", "enterprise", "python", "async-jobs" ], "lastRelease": "2026-10-01", "graded": true, "anchor": { "graded": true, "score": 64.2, "grade": "B", "agentReady": false, "rank": 325, "ranked": true, "rankOf": 842, "categoryRank": 3, "methodology": "0.4", "run": "2026-10-01", "scores": { "ergonomics": 48, "maintenance": 80, "payments": 20, "reliability": 67, "schema": 82, "security": 71, "transparency": 88 }, "pending": [ "performance", "tasks" ], "assessment": { "confidence": "medium", "date": "2026-10-01" }, "negative": 0, "verdict": "Supervised, preference and reinforcement tuning of Gemini, plus supervised tuning of Gemma, Llama and Qwen. No weight export. The tuned model exists only as a Google Cloud endpoint.", "bestFor": "Teams already on Google Cloud who need to tune Gemini itself, especially with RL, and will serve it there.", "strengths": [ "Supervised, preference and reinforcement tuning of Gemini, plus supervised tuning of Gemma, Llama and Qwen", "No Vertex or Gemini incidents on the Google Cloud status dashboard from July to September 2026", "Public proto for GenAiTuningService with filter and pagination on job lists, and docs pages served as Markdown at `.md.txt`", "Google says it won't train or fine-tune on customer data without permission, and a dated model lifecycle table promises 12 months from release", "ISO 27001, 27017 and 27018 and SOC 1, 2 and 3 cover Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, and the subprocessor list gives locations" ], "weaknesses": [ "No weight export. The tuned model exists only as a Google Cloud endpoint", "Tuned Gemini 3 inference costs 1.5x the base model for as long as you serve it", "Setup needs a project, billing, IAM and a Cloud Storage bucket before the first job", "RL tuning is Pre-GA on v1beta1, and the SDK's `tunings.tune()` is marked experimental", "Gemini 2.5 Pro, Flash and Flash-Lite retire on 20 October 2026, and the docs don't say what happens to their tunes" ], "agentNotes": [ "Use `client.tunings.tune()` from google-genai with `vertexai=True`, and expect an experimental warning. Tuning isn't available on the Gemini Developer API", "Add `.md.txt` to any docs.cloud.google.com URL to read the page as Markdown", "Tune Gemini 3.5 Flash or 3.1 Flash-Lite. The 2.5 models retire on 2026-10-20", "List jobs with a filter before re-sending a create after a timeout. There's no request ID to deduplicate it", "Count dataset tokens times epochs before submitting, since that product is the bill, and price serving at 1.5x base for Gemini 3 tunes" ], "metrics": { "kind": "remote", "measured": false }, "reviewCount": 2, "avgRating": 2.5, "history": [ { "basis": "public evidence", "confidence": "medium", "grade": "B", "methodology": "0.4", "pending": [ "performance", "tasks" ], "run": "2026-10-01", "runLabel": "October 2026 research run", "score": 64.2 } ], "editorialScores": { "ergonomics": 48, "maintenance": 80, "payments": 20, "reliability": 67, "schema": 82, "security": 71, "transparency": 78 }, "provenanceScore": 97 }, "connect": { "install": "pip install google-genai", "http": "curl -X POST \"https://us-central1-aiplatform.googleapis.com/v1/projects/$GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT/locations/us-central1/tuningJobs\" \\\n -H \"Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)\" -H \"content-type: application/json\" \\\n -d '{\"baseModel\":\"gemini-3.5-flash\",\"supervisedTuningSpec\":{\"trainingDatasetUri\":\"gs://my-bucket/train.jsonl\",\"hyperParameters\":{\"epochCount\":3,\"adapterSize\":\"ADAPTER_SIZE_FOUR\"}},\"tunedModelDisplayName\":\"my-tune\"}'" }, "letme": { "capability": "https://letme.dev/finetune.sft", "tool": "https://letme.dev/vertex-ai-tuning" }, "sameCompany": [ "gemini-api", "gemini-embedding", "google-model-armor", "google-imagen", "google-veo", "google-lyria", "google-speech-to-text", "gemini-live", "google-adk", "google-secret-manager", "google-weather-api", "chrome-devtools-mcp", "google-maps-platform", "google-cloud-translation", "google-calendar-api", "firebase-cloud-messaging", "google-drive-api", "gemini-cli", "google-search-console", "google-ads-api", "google-forms", "google-sheets-api", "gmail-api" ], "area": "models", "unitPrices": [ { "item": "Gemini 3.5 Flash, supervised tuning", "unit": "1m-tokens", "usd": 10 }, { "item": "Gemini 3.5 Flash, reinforcement learning fine-tuning", "unit": "1m-tokens", "usd": 10 }, { "item": "Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite, supervised tuning", "unit": "1m-tokens", "usd": 3 }, { "item": "Gemini 2.5 Pro, supervised tuning", "unit": "1m-tokens", "usd": 25 }, { "item": "Gemini 2.5 Flash, supervised or preference tuning", "unit": "1m-tokens", "usd": 5 }, { "item": "Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite, supervised or preference tuning", "unit": "1m-tokens", "usd": 1.5 }, { "item": "Gemma 3 27B IT, supervised tuning", "unit": "1m-tokens", "usd": 6.83 }, { "item": "Llama 3.3 70B, supervised tuning", "unit": "1m-tokens", "usd": 6.72 }, { "item": "Qwen 3 32B, supervised tuning", "unit": "1m-tokens", "usd": 6.57 } ], "provenance": { "legalEntity": "Google LLC", "domain": "google.com", "domainRegistered": "1997-09-15", "domainNote": "The endpoint is on googleapis.com, Google's API domain. google.com was registered in 1997.", "endpointOnVendorDomain": true, "terms": "https://cloud.google.com/terms", "privacy": "https://policies.google.com/privacy", "statusPage": "https://status.cloud.google.com", "changelog": "https://docs.cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise-agent-platform/release-notes", "securityTxt": "valid", "checked": "2026-09-30", "notes": [ "Entity, domain and security.txt are the same as the gemini-api listing, which uses the same Google privacy policy. The terms differ: this product runs under the Google Cloud Platform terms, whose contracting entity is set per billing country at cloud.google.com/terms/google-entity.", "The docs site serves navigation first and truncates the article body for a text fetcher, so the supported-model list, dataset limits and the checkpoint export page couldn't be read. Model and price facts come from the pricing page and the google-genai source.", "The old Vertex AI pricing page at cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/generative-ai/pricing still serves, but its tuning table stops at Gemini 2.5; the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform pricing page has the Gemini 3 rows." ], "score": 97 }, "pageJsonUrl": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/vertex-ai-tuning.json", "live": { "slug": "vertex-ai-tuning", "probe": { "target": "https://us-central1-aiplatform.googleapis.com/v1", "method": "get", "lastAt": "2026-10-09T11:46:44.893412731Z", "lastOk": true, "lastStatus": 404, "lastMs": 607, "authRequired": false, "uptime24h": 100, "uptime30d": 100, "p50ms24h": 602, "p95ms24h": 678, "samples24h": 259, "samples30d": 2109, "days": [ { "date": "2026-10-01", "probes": 109, "ok": 109 }, { "date": "2026-10-02", "probes": 248, "ok": 248 }, { "date": "2026-10-03", "probes": 271, "ok": 271 }, { "date": "2026-10-04", "probes": 272, "ok": 272 }, { "date": "2026-10-05", "probes": 272, "ok": 272 }, { "date": "2026-10-06", "probes": 272, "ok": 272 }, { "date": "2026-10-07", "probes": 272, "ok": 272 }, { "date": "2026-10-08", "probes": 268, "ok": 268 }, { "date": "2026-10-09", "probes": 125, "ok": 125 } ] }, "versions": [ { "registry": "github", "name": "googleapis/python-genai", "version": "v2.29.0", "released": "2026-10-07", "seenAt": "2026-10-08T16:34:14.536586178Z" }, { "registry": "pypi", "name": "google-genai", "version": "2.29.0", "released": "2026-10-07", "seenAt": "2026-10-08T16:34:14.345198998Z" } ], "githubStars": 4009, "pypiWeekly": 34128301, "securityTxt": { "url": "https://google.com/.well-known/security.txt", "state": "valid", "expires": "2030-04-01T00:00:00z", "checkedAt": "2026-10-08T15:38:39.75078566Z" }, "domain": { "domain": "google.com", "registered": "1997-09-15", "source": "https://rdap.verisign.com/com/v1/domain/google.com", "checkedAt": "2026-10-04T13:05:50.737985829Z" }, "pages": [ { "url": "https://docs.cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise-agent-platform/release-notes", "kind": "changelog", "status": 200, "checkedAt": "2026-10-08T18:18:25.711138322Z", "changedAt": "2026-10-08T18:18:25.711138322Z", "fingerprint": "5ca95b459af7" }, { "url": "https://cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise-agent-platform/generative-ai/pricing", "kind": "pricing", "status": 200, "checkedAt": "2026-10-08T18:16:15.480038421Z", "changedAt": "2026-10-08T18:16:15.480038421Z", "fingerprint": "9f07a469a718" } ], "updatedAt": "2026-10-09T11:46:44.893412731Z" } }, "facts": [ { "a": "Agent framework", "b": "HTTP API", "name": "Kind" }, { "a": "Axolotl AI", "b": "Google Cloud", "name": "Vendor" }, { "a": "no (local only)", "b": "https://us-central1-aiplatform.googleapis.com/v1", "name": "Hosted endpoint" }, { "a": "", "b": "HTTP", "name": "Transports" }, { "a": "None", "b": "OAuth", "name": "Auth" }, { "a": "Free", "b": "Pay per use", "name": "Pricing" }, { "a": "no", "b": "no", "name": "x402" }, { "a": "Apache-2.0", "b": "Apache-2.0 (SDK)", "name": "Licence" }, { "a": "no", "b": "no", "name": "Read-only variant documented" }, { "a": "no", "b": "no", "name": "llms.txt" }, { "a": "2026-09-30", "b": "2026-10-01", "name": "Last release" }, { "a": "no document linked", "b": "2026-09-02", "name": "Terms last updated" }, { "a": "no document linked", "b": "2026-10-01", "name": "Privacy policy last updated" }, { "a": "", "b": "yes", "name": "Customer content may train models" }, { "a": "", "b": "not found in the text", "name": "Terms restrict automated access" }, { "a": "", "b": "not found in the text", "name": "Terms restrict benchmarking" }, { "a": "", "b": "not found in the text", "name": "Terms or service can change without notice" }, { "a": "", "b": "not found in the text", "name": "Arbitration or class-action waiver" }, { "a": "13k stars, 2.1k PyPI/wk", "b": "3.9k stars, 32.9M PyPI/wk", "name": "Popularity" }, { "a": "none", "b": "2.5/5 (2)", "name": "Agent reviews" } ], "faq": [ { "answer": "Axolotl and Vertex AI Gemini tuning score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 64.8 (B) and 64.2 (B). Vertex AI Gemini tuning leads on security \u0026 auth and transparency \u0026 trust.", "question": "Which is better for AI agents, Axolotl or Vertex AI Gemini tuning?" }, { "answer": "No hosted endpoint is listed for Axolotl. Vertex AI Gemini tuning has a hosted endpoint at https://us-central1-aiplatform.googleapis.com/v1.", "question": "Can an agent call Axolotl and Vertex AI Gemini tuning without installing anything?" }, { "answer": "Axolotl is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Vertex AI Gemini tuning.", "question": "Are Axolotl and Vertex AI Gemini tuning open source?" } ], "goodFor": [ { "aheadOn": [ "Agent ergonomics, 60 against 48", "Payments \u0026 pricing, 60 against 20", "Maintenance \u0026 community, 88 against 80" ], "also": [ "No key needed to call it", "Open source" ], "goodFor": "A team that wants a repeatable, config-driven fine-tune of an open model on its own or rented GPUs, including multi-GPU and multi-node runs.", "slug": "axolotl", "watchFor": "Telemetry to PostHog is on by default and delays training start by 10 seconds until the variable is set either way" }, { "aheadOn": [ "Security \u0026 auth, 71 against 52", "Transparency \u0026 trust, 88 against 56" ], "also": [ "A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install" ], "goodFor": "Teams already on Google Cloud who need to tune Gemini itself, especially with RL, and will serve it there.", "slug": "vertex-ai-tuning", "watchFor": "No weight export. The tuned model exists only as a Google Cloud endpoint" } ], "job": { "capability": "finetune.sft", "name": "Finetune sft" }, "others": [ { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-bedrock-customization-vs-axolotl.json", "title": "Amazon Bedrock model customisation vs Axolotl", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-bedrock-customization-vs-axolotl" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-bedrock-customization-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.json", "title": "Amazon Bedrock model customisation vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-bedrock-customization-vs-vertex-ai-tuning" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-azure-foundry-fine-tuning.json", "title": "Axolotl vs Microsoft Foundry fine-tuning (Azure OpenAI)", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-azure-foundry-fine-tuning" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-fireworks-fine-tuning.json", "title": "Axolotl vs Fireworks AI Fine-tuning", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-fireworks-fine-tuning" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-nebius-token-factory-fine-tuning.json", "title": "Axolotl vs Nebius Token Factory fine-tuning", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-nebius-token-factory-fine-tuning" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-tinker.json", "title": "Axolotl vs Tinker", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-tinker" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-together-fine-tuning.json", "title": "Axolotl vs Together AI Fine-tuning", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-together-fine-tuning" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-unsloth.json", "title": "Axolotl vs Unsloth", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-unsloth" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-foundry-fine-tuning-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.json", "title": "Microsoft Foundry fine-tuning (Azure OpenAI) vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-foundry-fine-tuning-vs-vertex-ai-tuning" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/fireworks-fine-tuning-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.json", "title": "Fireworks AI Fine-tuning vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/fireworks-fine-tuning-vs-vertex-ai-tuning" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nebius-token-factory-fine-tuning-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.json", "title": "Nebius Token Factory fine-tuning vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nebius-token-factory-fine-tuning-vs-vertex-ai-tuning" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/tinker-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.json", "title": "Tinker vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/tinker-vs-vertex-ai-tuning" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/together-fine-tuning-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.json", "title": "Together AI Fine-tuning vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/together-fine-tuning-vs-vertex-ai-tuning" }, { "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/unsloth-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.json", "title": "Unsloth vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/unsloth-vs-vertex-ai-tuning" } ], "scores": [ { "axolotl": 64, "by": 3, "edge": "vertex-ai-tuning", "key": "reliability", "name": "Reliability", "vertex-ai-tuning": 67, "weight": 16 }, { "key": "performance", "name": "Performance", "pending": true, "weight": 10 }, { "axolotl": 80, "by": 2, "edge": "vertex-ai-tuning", "key": "schema", "name": "Schema \u0026 documentation", "vertex-ai-tuning": 82, "weight": 13 }, { "axolotl": 60, "by": 12, "edge": "axolotl", "key": "ergonomics", "name": "Agent ergonomics", "vertex-ai-tuning": 48, "weight": 13 }, { "axolotl": 52, "by": 19, "edge": "vertex-ai-tuning", "key": "security", "name": "Security \u0026 auth", "vertex-ai-tuning": 71, "weight": 14 }, { "axolotl": 60, "by": 40, "edge": "axolotl", "key": "payments", "name": "Payments \u0026 pricing", "vertex-ai-tuning": 20, "weight": 10 }, { "key": "tasks", "name": "Task success", "pending": true, "weight": 10 }, { "axolotl": 88, "by": 8, "edge": "axolotl", "key": "maintenance", "name": "Maintenance \u0026 community", "vertex-ai-tuning": 80, "weight": 7 }, { "axolotl": 56, "by": 32, "edge": "vertex-ai-tuning", "key": "transparency", "name": "Transparency \u0026 trust", "vertex-ai-tuning": 88, "weight": 7 } ], "summary": "Axolotl and Vertex AI Gemini tuning score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 64.8 (B) and 64.2 (B). Vertex AI Gemini tuning leads on security \u0026 auth and transparency \u0026 trust. Both do finetune sft.", "verdicts": { "axolotl": "Axolotl runs a whole fine-tuning job from one YAML file and ships a JSON Schema of its config plus bundled agent docs. It is 0.x software with telemetry on by default, no terms or privacy policy, and the owner supplies the GPU.", "vertex-ai-tuning": "Supervised, preference and reinforcement tuning of Gemini, plus supervised tuning of Gemma, Llama and Qwen. No weight export. The tuned model exists only as a Google Cloud endpoint." } }, "kind": "anchor.page", "links": { "api": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json", "html": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-vertex-ai-tuning", "json": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.json", "llms": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt", "markdown": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.md", "slim": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.min.md" }, "markdown": "Axolotl and Vertex AI Gemini tuning score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 64.8 (B) and 64.2 (B). Vertex AI Gemini tuning leads on security \u0026 auth and transparency \u0026 trust. Both do finetune sft.\n\n- Axolotl: grade B, 64.8/100, rank #307 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/axolotl.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/axolotl.json\n- Vertex AI Gemini tuning: grade B, 64.2/100, rank #325 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/vertex-ai-tuning.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/vertex-ai-tuning.json\n\n## Which one, for what\n\n### Axolotl (B)\n\nGood for: A team that wants a repeatable, config-driven fine-tune of an open model on its own or rented GPUs, including multi-GPU and multi-node runs.\n\nAhead on:\n- Agent ergonomics, 60 against 48\n- Payments \u0026 pricing, 60 against 20\n- Maintenance \u0026 community, 88 against 80\n\nAlso in its favour:\n- No key needed to call it\n- Open source\n\nWatch for: Telemetry to PostHog is on by default and delays training start by 10 seconds until the variable is set either way\n\n### Vertex AI Gemini tuning (B)\n\nGood for: Teams already on Google Cloud who need to tune Gemini itself, especially with RL, and will serve it there.\n\nAhead on:\n- Security \u0026 auth, 71 against 52\n- Transparency \u0026 trust, 88 against 56\n\nAlso in its favour:\n- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install\n\nWatch for: No weight export. The tuned model exists only as a Google Cloud endpoint\n\n\n## Score by category\n\n| Category | Weight | Axolotl | Vertex AI Gemini tuning | Edge |\n| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |\n| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 64 | 67 | Vertex AI Gemini tuning +3 |\n| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |\n| Schema \u0026 documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 82 | Vertex AI Gemini tuning +2 |\n| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 60 | 48 | Axolotl +12 |\n| Security \u0026 auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 52 | 71 | Vertex AI Gemini tuning +19 |\n| Payments \u0026 pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 20 | Axolotl +40 |\n| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |\n| Maintenance \u0026 community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 88 | 80 | Axolotl +8 |\n| Transparency \u0026 trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 56 | 88 | Vertex AI Gemini tuning +32 |\n| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |\n| **Total** | | **64.8 · B** | **64.2 · B** | |\n\n## Facts side by side\n\n| Fact | Axolotl | Vertex AI Gemini tuning |\n| --- | --- | --- |\n| Kind | Agent framework | HTTP API |\n| Vendor | Axolotl AI | Google Cloud |\n| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://us-central1-aiplatform.googleapis.com/v1` |\n| Transports | | HTTP |\n| Auth | None | OAuth |\n| Pricing | Free | Pay per use |\n| x402 | no | no |\n| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 (SDK) |\n| Read-only variant documented | no | no |\n| llms.txt | no | no |\n| Last release | 2026-09-30 | 2026-10-01 |\n| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-09-02 |\n| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-10-01 |\n| Customer content may train models | | yes |\n| Terms restrict automated access | | not found in the text |\n| Terms restrict benchmarking | | not found in the text |\n| Terms or service can change without notice | | not found in the text |\n| Arbitration or class-action waiver | | not found in the text |\n| Popularity | 13k stars, 2.1k PyPI/wk | 3.9k stars, 32.9M PyPI/wk |\n| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (2) |\n\n## Verdicts\n\n**Axolotl.** Axolotl runs a whole fine-tuning job from one YAML file and ships a JSON Schema of its config plus bundled agent docs. It is 0.x software with telemetry on by default, no terms or privacy policy, and the owner supplies the GPU.\n\n**Vertex AI Gemini tuning.** Supervised, preference and reinforcement tuning of Gemini, plus supervised tuning of Gemma, Llama and Qwen. No weight export. The tuned model exists only as a Google Cloud endpoint.\n\n## Before you call either\n\n### Axolotl\n\n1. Set `AXOLOTL_DO_NOT_TRACK=1` before any command, or training waits 10 seconds and sends usage events to PostHog\n2. Run `axolotl agent-docs` and `axolotl config-schema --field \u003cname\u003e` before writing a config; both work offline from the installed package\n3. Install torch first, then `uv pip install --no-build-isolation axolotl[deepspeed]`, on Python 3.12 or later with PyTorch 2.13 or later\n4. Take example configs from the same release tag as the installed version; minor releases remove and rename config keys\n5. Resume an interrupted run with `axolotl train config.yml --resume-from-checkpoint \u003cpath\u003e`, then `axolotl merge-lora` and `axolotl export` only when shipping\n\n### Vertex AI Gemini tuning\n\n1. Use `client.tunings.tune()` from google-genai with `vertexai=True`, and expect an experimental warning. Tuning isn't available on the Gemini Developer API\n2. Add `.md.txt` to any docs.cloud.google.com URL to read the page as Markdown\n3. Tune Gemini 3.5 Flash or 3.1 Flash-Lite. The 2.5 models retire on 2026-10-20\n4. List jobs with a filter before re-sending a create after a timeout. There's no request ID to deduplicate it\n5. Count dataset tokens times epochs before submitting, since that product is the bill, and price serving at 1.5x base for Gemini 3 tunes\n\n## Questions\n\n### Which is better for AI agents, Axolotl or Vertex AI Gemini tuning?\n\nAxolotl and Vertex AI Gemini tuning score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 64.8 (B) and 64.2 (B). Vertex AI Gemini tuning leads on security \u0026 auth and transparency \u0026 trust.\n\n### Can an agent call Axolotl and Vertex AI Gemini tuning without installing anything?\n\nNo hosted endpoint is listed for Axolotl. Vertex AI Gemini tuning has a hosted endpoint at https://us-central1-aiplatform.googleapis.com/v1.\n\n### Are Axolotl and Vertex AI Gemini tuning open source?\n\nAxolotl is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Vertex AI Gemini tuning.\n\n\n## For agents\n\n- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.min.md\n- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {\"a\": \"axolotl\", \"b\": \"vertex-ai-tuning\"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare axolotl vertex-ai-tuning`\n- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/axolotl.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/vertex-ai-tuning.json\n\n## Other comparisons with Axolotl or Vertex AI Gemini tuning\n\n- [Amazon Bedrock model customisation vs Axolotl](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-bedrock-customization-vs-axolotl.md)\n- [Amazon Bedrock model customisation vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-bedrock-customization-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.md)\n- [Axolotl vs Microsoft Foundry fine-tuning (Azure OpenAI)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-azure-foundry-fine-tuning.md)\n- [Axolotl vs Fireworks AI Fine-tuning](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-fireworks-fine-tuning.md)\n- [Axolotl vs Nebius Token Factory fine-tuning](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-nebius-token-factory-fine-tuning.md)\n- [Axolotl vs Tinker](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-tinker.md)\n- [Axolotl vs Together AI Fine-tuning](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-together-fine-tuning.md)\n- [Axolotl vs Unsloth](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-unsloth.md)\n- [Microsoft Foundry fine-tuning (Azure OpenAI) vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-foundry-fine-tuning-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.md)\n- [Fireworks AI Fine-tuning vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/fireworks-fine-tuning-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.md)\n- [Nebius Token Factory fine-tuning vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nebius-token-factory-fine-tuning-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.md)\n- [Tinker vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/tinker-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.md)\n- [Together AI Fine-tuning vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/together-fine-tuning-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.md)\n- [Unsloth vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/unsloth-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.md)\n", "meta": { "attribution": "Anchor Terminal (https://www.anchorterminal.com)", "docs": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/docs/", "generatedAt": "2026-10-09", "license": "CC-BY-4.0", "method": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/", "methodology": "0.4", "openapi": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/openapi.json", "preview": false, "run": "2026-10-01", "runLabel": "October 2026 research run" }, "page": { "breadcrumbs": [ { "name": "Home", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/" }, { "name": "Compare", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/" }, { "name": "Axolotl vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning", "url": "" } ], "description": "Axolotl and Vertex AI Gemini tuning score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 64.8 (B) and 64.2 (B). Vertex AI Gemini tuning leads on security \u0026 auth and transparency \u0026 trust. Both do finetune sft. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.", "facts": [ "Axolotl B 64.8", "Vertex AI Gemini tuning B 64.2", "scores" ], "h1": "Axolotl vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning", "image": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/assets/og/compare-axolotl-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.png", "path": "/compare/axolotl-vs-vertex-ai-tuning", "published": "2026-10-01", "section": "tools", "title": "Axolotl vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning for AI agents, B 64.8 vs B 64.2", "toc": null, "updated": "2026-10-09", "url": "https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-vertex-ai-tuning" }, "tokens": { "markdown": 2250, "slim": 680 }, "version": 1 }