# Axolotl vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning

> 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 & auth and transparency & trust. Both do finetune sft. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-vertex-ai-tuning
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.md (~2,250 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axolotl-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.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
- Updated: 2026-10-09

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 & auth and transparency & trust. Both do finetune sft.

- 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
- 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

## Which one, for what

### Axolotl (B)

Good 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.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 60 against 48
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 88 against 80

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Open source

Watch for: Telemetry to PostHog is on by default and delays training start by 10 seconds until the variable is set either way

### Vertex AI Gemini tuning (B)

Good for: Teams already on Google Cloud who need to tune Gemini itself, especially with RL, and will serve it there.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 71 against 52
- Transparency & trust, 88 against 56

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: No weight export. The tuned model exists only as a Google Cloud endpoint


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Axolotl | Vertex AI Gemini tuning | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 64 | 67 | Vertex AI Gemini tuning +3 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 82 | Vertex AI Gemini tuning +2 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 60 | 48 | Axolotl +12 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 52 | 71 | Vertex AI Gemini tuning +19 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 20 | Axolotl +40 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 88 | 80 | Axolotl +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 56 | 88 | Vertex AI Gemini tuning +32 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **64.8 · B** | **64.2 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Axolotl | Vertex AI Gemini tuning |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent framework | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Axolotl AI | Google Cloud |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://us-central1-aiplatform.googleapis.com/v1` |
| Transports |  | HTTP |
| Auth | None | OAuth |
| Pricing | Free | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 (SDK) |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-30 | 2026-10-01 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-09-02 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models |  | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 13k stars, 2.1k PyPI/wk | 3.9k stars, 32.9M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (2) |

## 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 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.

## Before you call either

### Axolotl

1. Set `AXOLOTL_DO_NOT_TRACK=1` before any command, or training waits 10 seconds and sends usage events to PostHog
2. Run `axolotl agent-docs` and `axolotl config-schema --field <name>` before writing a config; both work offline from the installed package
3. Install torch first, then `uv pip install --no-build-isolation axolotl[deepspeed]`, on Python 3.12 or later with PyTorch 2.13 or later
4. Take example configs from the same release tag as the installed version; minor releases remove and rename config keys
5. Resume an interrupted run with `axolotl train config.yml --resume-from-checkpoint <path>`, then `axolotl merge-lora` and `axolotl export` only when shipping

### Vertex AI Gemini tuning

1. Use `client.tunings.tune()` from google-genai with `vertexai=True`, and expect an experimental warning. Tuning isn't available on the Gemini Developer API
2. Add `.md.txt` to any docs.cloud.google.com URL to read the page as Markdown
3. Tune Gemini 3.5 Flash or 3.1 Flash-Lite. The 2.5 models retire on 2026-10-20
4. List jobs with a filter before re-sending a create after a timeout. There's no request ID to deduplicate it
5. Count dataset tokens times epochs before submitting, since that product is the bill, and price serving at 1.5x base for Gemini 3 tunes

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Axolotl or Vertex AI Gemini tuning?

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 & auth and transparency & trust.

### Can an agent call Axolotl and Vertex AI Gemini tuning without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Axolotl. Vertex AI Gemini tuning has a hosted endpoint at https://us-central1-aiplatform.googleapis.com/v1.

### Are Axolotl and Vertex AI Gemini tuning open source?

Axolotl is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Vertex AI Gemini tuning.


## For agents

- 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
- 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`
- 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

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