RF-DETR
Real-time transformer object detection and segmentation models built on DINOv2 and designed for fine-tuning.
About
Designed for fine-tuning on custom datasets, RF-DETR pairs a DINOv2 vision transformer backbone with a DETR style detection head and uses neural architecture search to trade accuracy against latency across six sizes from Nano to 2XLarge. The 2XLarge model reaches 60.1 COCO AP, while the Nano variant runs at about 2.3 ms per image on an NVIDIA T4 with TensorRT and FP16 at batch size 1. Beyond boxes, the family adds six instance segmentation variants and a preview keypoint model behind one consistent API. Training and inference come through the rfdetr Python package, installed with pip on Python 3.10 or newer, with export paths to ONNX and TensorRT for edge devices such as NVIDIA Jetson. The package and the Nano through Large detection checkpoints are Apache 2.0, while the XL and 2XLarge detection models arrive in an rfdetr_plus extension under Roboflow's PML 1.0 license, and every segmentation size stays Apache 2.0. The work was accepted to ICLR 2026, the repository has about 8,800 GitHub stars, and it is a common starting point for teams that want DETR accuracy at real-time speeds.
Should you use RF-DETR?
Pick it when
Pick RF-DETR when you are fine-tuning a detector or instance segmenter on your own dataset for real-time or Jetson deployment and want transformer accuracy with Apache 2.0 terms for the Nano through Large sizes.
Look elsewhere when
Skip it if you need the XL or 2XLarge detection weights without accepting Roboflow's PML 1.0 license, or want mature pose, oriented boxes, and classification in one toolkit, where Ultralytics YOLO is broader but AGPL-3.0.
Alternatives to RF-DETR
- Ultralytics YOLO
Covers pose, oriented boxes, classification, and tracking in one CLI, but AGPL-3.0 means a paid license for closed products, unlike RF-DETR's Apache sizes.
- MMDetection
Hosts many DETR variants and other families for side-by-side research, at the cost of heavier configuration than RF-DETR's single pip package.
- Grounding DINO
Detects new classes from text with no labeled data, where RF-DETR needs training examples but runs at real-time speed once fine-tuned.
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Details
- Price
- Freemium
- Platform
- Local/Desktop
- Difficulty
- Intermediate (3/5)
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Added
- Jul 29, 2026