0PricingLogin▼
LLM Apps in Production (RAG + Vector DB + Caching) · Lesson

Choosing an LLM Provider

Evaluate popular LLM APIs like OpenAI, Anthropic, or open-source alternatives for your RAG implementation.

Choosing Your LLM Brain

Welcome to choosing an LLM provider! This is a crucial first step for your RAG application.

Think of the Large Language Model (LLM) as the 'brain' of your RAG system. It's what will understand questions and generate answers.

  • LLM Provider: A service or platform that gives you access to an LLM.
  • Why choose carefully? Different providers offer different models, features, costs, and performance.

API vs. Open-Source: The Big Choice

When selecting an LLM, you typically have two main paths:

  • API-based Providers: You pay to use models hosted by companies like OpenAI or Anthropic. You send requests to their servers.
  • Open-Source LLMs: You download the model weights and run them yourself, either locally or on your own cloud infrastructure.

Each path has its own set of advantages and disadvantages.

All lessons in this course

  1. Choosing an LLM Provider
  2. Data Loading and Text Chunking Basics
  3. Building a Simple RAG Pipeline
  4. Testing & Evaluating Your RAG App
← Back to LLM Apps in Production (RAG + Vector DB + Caching)