Fine-tuning vs Prompt Engineering

Fine-tuning and prompt engineering are two ways to get better outputs from a language model. Fine-tuning means training an existing model further with your own examples so it adapts to specific tasks. It needs extra data, computing power, and time but creates deeply specialized models. Prompt engineering, in contrast, leaves the model unchanged and focuses on crafting better instructions or examples in the prompt itself. It is faster, cheaper, and safer when no custom data is available. Fine-tuning suits deep domain needs; prompt engineering fits quick control and prototyping.