Fine-Tuning & Training Frameworksfree

Axolotl

Config-file-driven fine-tuning workflow (YAML) covering LoRA, QLoRA, full fine-tuning, preference tuning and RL

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What Axolotl does

  • Config-file-driven fine-tuning workflow (YAML) covering LoRA, QLoRA, full fine-tuning, preference tuning and RL
  • Broad multi-model and multimodal training support with GPU-efficiency optimizations built in
  • Popular choice for reproducible post-training recipes shared across the open-model community

Axolotl — straight answers

What is Axolotl?

Axolotl is listed under Fine-Tuning & Training Frameworks, in the AI Models & Local Execution category on Flocci AI Tools. Config-file-driven fine-tuning workflow (YAML) covering LoRA, QLoRA, full fine-tuning, preference tuning and RL. It is free, with no paid plan attached, and it lives at axolotl.ai.

Is Axolotl free?

Axolotl is listed as fully free — there is no paid tier attached to it in the catalog. That makes it one of the 396 entries on Flocci AI Tools with no upgrade path built in.

Can I use Axolotl in a browser, or is there an app?

Axolotl needs to be installed or self-hosted — it doesn't run in a browser tab. It is available on the command line and self-hosting.

What can Axolotl do?

Axolotl does 3 things the catalog singles out: Config-file-driven fine-tuning workflow (yaml) covering lora, qlora, full fine-tuning, preference tuning and rl; broad multi-model and multimodal training support with gpu-efficiency optimizations built in; popular choice for reproducible post-training recipes shared across the open-model community.

What is the best free alternative to Axolotl?

LLaMA-Factory is the closest free alternative: it sits in the same Fine-Tuning & Training Frameworks sub-category and is free. AI Toolkit (Ostris), LitGPT and ms-swift (ModelScope) also start free. The full list is on the alternatives page.

See the full list →

Axolotl alternatives

Compare all alternatives →

Unsloth

Fine-Tuning & Training Frameworks
free
  • Fine-tunes LLMs, diffusion, TTS and embedding models 2x faster with ~70% less VRAM than standard Hugging Face training
  • Free Google Colab notebooks let anyone fine-tune open models like Llama/Qwen/GLM on a free T4 GPU
  • Supports LoRA, QLoRA, full fine-tuning, GRPO and DPO reinforcement/preference tuning in one library
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LLaMA-Factory

Fine-Tuning & Training Frameworks
free
  • Zero-code Web UI (LLaMA Board) for fine-tuning 100+ open models without writing training scripts
  • Supports full-tuning, LoRA, 2/3/4/5/6/8-bit QLoRA, DPO, PPO, GaLore and PiSSA in one framework
  • Used internally by Amazon, NVIDIA and Aliyun for open-model post-training
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TRL (Hugging Face)

Fine-Tuning & Training Frameworks
freeNew
  • Post-training library covering SFT, DPO, GRPO and reward modeling for open LLMs
  • Integrates with Transformers, PEFT and vLLM
  • Apache-2.0
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ms-swift (ModelScope)

Fine-Tuning & Training Frameworks
freeNew
  • Fine-tuning and deployment framework supporting hundreds of LLMs and multimodal models
  • LoRA, full-parameter, DPO, GRPO and quantization in one toolkit
  • Apache-2.0, maintained by Alibaba's ModelScope community
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LitGPT

Fine-Tuning & Training Frameworks
freeNew
  • Clean from-scratch implementations of 20+ LLMs for pretraining, fine-tuning and deployment
  • YAML recipes with LoRA, QLoRA and FSDP
  • Apache-2.0
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AI Toolkit (Ostris)

Fine-Tuning & Training Frameworks
freeNew
  • All-in-one trainer for LoRAs on diffusion and video models (FLUX, Wan and more)
  • Web UI and config-file workflows, runs on consumer GPUs
  • MIT licensed
Visit

Head-to-head comparisons

Axolotl vs UnslothAxolotl vs LLaMA-FactoryAxolotl vs TRL (Hugging Face)Axolotl vs ms-swift (ModelScope)Axolotl vs LitGPTAxolotl vs AI Toolkit (Ostris)