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Fine-tuning AI apps

Platforms and tooling for fine-tuning, distilling, and adapting foundation models on your own data.

5 apps · researched & kept current by Claude Code

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  • View Tinker details
    Fine-tuningPAID

    Tinker

    Thinking Machines Lab

    Managed fine-tuning API with low-level control over the training loop.

    Tinker is Thinking Machines Lab's training API for fine-tuning open-weight LLMs. It exposes low-level primitives — forward_backward, optim_step, sample — so researchers keep full control of data and algorithms while the service handles distributed GPU scheduling and failure recovery. LoRA-based runs cover models from small Llamas up to large mixture-of-experts like Qwen-235B and Kimi K2, and trained weights can be downloaded.

    Worth knowing

    The debut product of Thinking Machines Lab, the startup founded by ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati; launched October 2025.

    • fine-tuning
    • lora
    • post-training
    • research
    • +1
  • View Axolotl details
    Fine-tuningFREEOSS

    Axolotl

    Axolotl AI

    Open-source post-training for LLMs — LoRA to RL, all from one YAML config.

    An open-source (Apache-2.0) framework that streamlines post-training for open-weight models: full fine-tuning, LoRA/QLoRA, preference tuning (DPO, IPO, KTO, ORPO), reinforcement learning (GRPO), reward modeling and quantization-aware training, configured through a single YAML file with no scripting. Wraps Hugging Face Transformers, PEFT, TRL and DeepSpeed, and supports dozens of model families including multimodal vision and audio models.

    Worth knowing

    Created by Wing Lian under the OpenAccess AI Collective; the community integrated QLoRA within seven days of the paper's release.

    • fine-tuning
    • lora
    • rlhf
    • open-source
  • View Predibase details
    Fine-tuningPAID

    Predibase

    Predibase (Rubrik)

    Fine-tune open-source LLMs and serve them in production.

    Predibase is an enterprise platform for fine-tuning open-source models and serving them in production. It pairs a post-training stack — supervised fine-tuning plus an end-to-end reinforcement fine-tuning (RFT) flow — with an optimized inference engine, and its open-source LoRAX framework serves many fine-tuned LoRA adapters from a single GPU. Runs as managed SaaS or inside your own VPC.

    Worth knowing

    Founded in 2021 by AI engineers from Google and Uber; acquired by data-security firm Rubrik in June 2025 for a reported $100M+.

    • fine-tuning
    • lora
    • rft
    • inference
    • +1
  • View Unsloth details
    Fine-tuningFREEMIUMOpen core

    Unsloth

    Unsloth AI

    Fine-tune open LLMs 2x faster with far less VRAM. Open source.

    An open-source (Apache-2.0) framework for fine-tuning and running open-weight models with custom CUDA kernels — roughly 2x faster training and large VRAM savings, so 7B–13B models fit on a single consumer GPU. Free tier runs on Colab/Kaggle or locally; Pro and Enterprise tiers add multi-GPU and multi-node speedups. Exports to GGUF/Safetensors for llama.cpp, vLLM, and Ollama.

    Worth knowing

    Built by Australian brothers Daniel and Michael Han (YC S24); Daniel made his name upstream-fixing bugs in Gemma, Llama and Mistral.

    • fine-tuning
    • lora
    • open-source
    • training
  • View OpenPipe details
    Fine-tuningFREEMIUM

    OpenPipe

    OpenPipe

    Replace frontier-model spend with a fine-tuned small model.

    Captures your production OpenAI / Anthropic calls, builds a dataset, fine-tunes a small open-weights model on your traffic, then serves the swap behind your existing SDK. The pitch: 10x cost reduction at parity.

    Worth knowing

    Acquired by CoreWeave in September 2025, folding its reinforcement-learning agent-training stack into CoreWeave's AI cloud.

    • fine-tuning
    • cost-reduction
    • drop-in
    • open-weights