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RF-DETR vs YOLOv12

2 of 5

Object Detection · verified 13 Aug 2026

RF-DETRRoboflowcurrent
YOLOv12Ultralyticscurrent
3 slots left
SpecificationRF-DETRYOLOv12
SummaryFirst real-time detector past 60 mAP on COCO.Attention-centric YOLO, still widely deployed.
COCO mAP60.5~55
SpeedReal timeVery high
LicenceApache 2.0AGPL-3.0
FamilyTransformer, set predictionSingle stage
Open vocabularyNoNo
Released20252025
CategoryObject DetectionObject Detection
OfficialRoboflow ↗Ultralytics ↗

Highlighted rows are where these differ.

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 →

YOLOv12

  • Attention added to the classic single-stage design
  • Same licensing consideration as YOLO26

Best for teams already on the YOLO toolchain.

Full spec sheet →