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Grounding DINO vs RF-DETR vs YOLO26

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Object Detection · verified 13 Aug 2026

×IGrounding DINOIDEA Researchcurrent
×RF-DETRRoboflowcurrent
×YOLO26Ultralyticscurrent
2 slots left
SpecificationGrounding DINORF-DETRYOLO26
SummaryDetects whatever you describe in words.First real-time detector past 60 mAP on COCO.The latest in the line most people mean by object detection.
COCO mAP~52 zero-shot60.5~55
SpeedModerateReal timeVery high
LicenceApache 2.0Apache 2.0AGPL-3.0
FamilyOpen vocabularyTransformer, set predictionSingle stage
Open vocabularyYesNoNo
Released202320252026
CategoryObject DetectionObject DetectionObject Detection
OfficialIDEA Research ↗Roboflow ↗Ultralytics ↗

Highlighted rows are where these differ.

Grounding DINO

  • Text prompt in, boxes out
  • Fine-tuning still beats it on specialised objects

Best for classes you have no data for.

Full spec sheet →

RF-DETR

  • Leads the RF100-VL domain-transfer benchmark
  • DINOv2 backbone, markedly better on occluded objects
  • Apache 2.0, which YOLO is not

Best for most custom detection tasks.

Full spec sheet →

YOLO26

  • Strong on Jetson, Snapdragon and ARM CPUs
  • AGPL-3.0: open-source your derivative work or buy a licence

Best for edge and mobile deployment.

Full spec sheet →