# Together AI Fine-tuning vs Unsloth

> Together AI Fine-tuning has a score of 54.9 (C) against Unsloth's 51.7 (D). Both do finetune sft. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 40 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-04

Together AI Fine-tuning has a score of 54.9 (C) against Unsloth's 51.7 (D). Both do finetune sft. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 40 points.

- Together AI Fine-tuning: grade C, 54.9/100, rank #319 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/together-fine-tuning.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/together-fine-tuning.json
- Unsloth: grade D, 51.7/100, rank #347 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/unsloth.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/unsloth.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Together AI Fine-tuning for reliability (+12), schema & documentation (+12), security & auth (+15), transparency & trust (+36).

Pick Unsloth for agent ergonomics (+11), payments & pricing (+40).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Together AI Fine-tuning | Unsloth | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 43 | Together AI Fine-tuning +12 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 78 | 66 | Together AI Fine-tuning +12 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 42 | 53 | Unsloth +11 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 50 | 35 | Together AI Fine-tuning +15 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 60 | Unsloth +40 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 82 | Unsloth +2 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 34 | Together AI Fine-tuning +36 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **54.9 · C** | **51.7 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Together AI Fine-tuning | Unsloth |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | Agent framework |
| Vendor | Together AI | Unsloth |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.together.ai/v1` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP |  |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (SDKs) | Apache-2.0 (core), AGPL-3.0 (Studio UI) |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-30 | 2026-09-28 |
| Popularity | 10 stars, 118k npm/wk, 369k PyPI/wk | 77k stars, 230k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Together AI Fine-tuning.** 31 tunable base models, 11 or 12 of them with full fine-tuning as well as LoRA. Fine-tuned models don't run serverless; dedicated endpoints start at $5.49 an hour.

**Unsloth.** The Apache-2.0 core runs on customer hardware and keeps model weights there. Users supply and pay for the GPU.

## Before you call either

### Together AI Fine-tuning

1. Call POST /v1/fine-tunes/estimate-price with the same body before creating the job, and check the model's minimum charge
2. Read `lora_training.max_rank` from the model limits response before setting `lora_r`; most models went to 128 on 2026-09-29
3. Don't retry a create call blindly after a timeout; there's no idempotency key, so list jobs and check first
4. Download with checkpoint=adapter if you'll merge locally; merged weights for a 70B model are a large stream
5. Tear down the dedicated endpoint once evaluation ends, since it bills while idle

### Unsloth

1. Install with `uv pip install unsloth --torch-backend=auto` on a CUDA machine; the desktop app is for people
2. Start from the notebook for the model family in unslothai/notebooks; it sets LoRA targets and the chat template
3. Save the LoRA adapter while iterating and merge to 16-bit or GGUF only when you ship
4. If Studio must be reachable by other agents, pass --disable-tools and keep it on 127.0.0.1 behind a tunnel
5. Pin the exact unsloth version; releases land several times a week and don't flag breaking changes

## Other comparisons with Together AI Fine-tuning or Unsloth

- [Microsoft Foundry fine-tuning (Azure OpenAI) vs Together AI Fine-tuning](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-foundry-fine-tuning-vs-together-fine-tuning.md)
- [Microsoft Foundry fine-tuning (Azure OpenAI) vs Unsloth](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-foundry-fine-tuning-vs-unsloth.md)
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- [Tinker vs Together AI Fine-tuning](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/tinker-vs-together-fine-tuning.md)
- [Tinker vs Unsloth](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/tinker-vs-unsloth.md)
- [Together AI Fine-tuning vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/together-fine-tuning-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.md)
- [Unsloth vs Vertex AI Gemini tuning](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/unsloth-vs-vertex-ai-tuning.md)