RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) keeps your knowledge in a searchable index and retrieves it at question time; fine-tuning trains the knowledge into the model's weights. For enterprise document intelligence the two are not interchangeable — and for most document-heavy use cases, RAG is the right default.
The comparison
| RAG | Fine-tuning | |
|---|---|---|
| New documents visible | Immediately after ingestion | Only after retraining |
| Citations to sources | Native — every answer cites passages | Impossible — knowledge is diffused into weights |
| Access control | Enforceable per document at query time | None — the model knows what it knows for everyone |
| Deleting a document's knowledge | Delete from the index | Practically impossible without retraining |
| Hallucination risk | Reduced — grounded in retrieved text | Persists; model answers confidently from stale weights |
| Up-front cost | Ingestion & indexing | Training runs, eval, re-deployment per update |
| Best for | Facts, documents, policies, contracts | Style, format, domain behaviour |
The compliance angle usually decides it
Under data-protection law (nFADP/GDPR), fine-tuning on personal data is a minefield: the data becomes irreversibly embedded in the weights, deletion rights become unenforceable, and per-user access control is impossible. RAG keeps data in a governed store where encryption, ACLs, retention and deletion all remain enforceable — which is why regulated Swiss industries deploy RAG, not fine-tuned corporate models.
When fine-tuning (or both) makes sense
Fine-tuning earns its cost when you need consistent behaviour rather than knowledge: a specific report format, a house tone, a narrow classification task. The strongest enterprise pattern is a capable base model + RAG for knowledge, optionally with light tuning for format — never fine-tuning as the knowledge store.
What SovraRAG does
SovraRAG is a RAG platform by conviction: hybrid retrieval with a knowledge graph, agentic multi-step reasoning for complex questions, per-document ACLs and cited answers — on 100% Swiss infrastructure, with per-tenant encryption the operator cannot bypass.