When Retrieval Beats Fine-Tuning
Retrieval-augmented generation works when the answer already exists somewhere in your documents and the model's job is to find and phrase it. It's faster to build, cheaper to update (add a document instead of retraining) and easier to audit, because every answer traces back to a source passage.
Fine-tuning earns its cost when the task is about style, format or judgment that isn't written down anywhere: matching a specific tone, learning a classification scheme your team applies by instinct, or handling inputs that don't map to any single retrievable document. Most projects use both: retrieval for facts, fine-tuning or careful prompting for how the answer is delivered.

















