Pyyan / Compare / SAM 2 vs YOLO26 vs YOLOv12 vs RTMDet
SAM 2 vs YOLO26 vs YOLOv12 vs RTMDet
4 of 5Object Detection · verified 13 Aug 2026
| Specification | SAM 2 | YOLO26 | YOLOv12 | RTMDet |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Summary | Segment anything, now including video. | The latest in the line most people mean by object detection. | Attention-centric YOLO, still widely deployed. | Pure throughput, and an MIT licence. |
| COCO mAP | Not applicable | ~55 | ~55 | ~52 |
| Speed | Real time | Very high | Very high | 300+ |
| Licence | Apache 2.0 | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Family | Segmentation | Single stage | Single stage | Single stage |
| Open vocabulary | Yes | No | No | No |
| Released | 2024 | 2026 | 2025 | 2022 |
| Category | Object Detection | Object Detection | Object Detection | Object Detection |
| Official | Meta ↗ | Ultralytics ↗ | Ultralytics ↗ | OpenMMLab ↗ |
Highlighted rows are where these differ.
SAM 2
- Not a detector: it segments what you point at
- Transformed how detection datasets get labelled
Best for segmentation and annotation.
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.
YOLOv12
- Attention added to the classic single-stage design
- Same licensing consideration as YOLO26
Best for teams already on the YOLO toolchain.
RTMDet
- Wins on raw speed where accuracy is sufficient
- MIT, so no derivative-work obligation
Best for high frame-rate video.