AI Lab · by Camila Soto · 2026-10-16

RAG vs long context: which one do you actually ship?

Context windows keep growing, yet retrieval still wins on cost and freshness for us. Curious if anyone dropped their vector DB completely.

26 sparks · 16 comments

Comments

Getting started with RAG and long context is easier than a year ago. That part is underrated.

Omar Hassan · 11 likes

Would love to see actual data on RAG vs long context instead of vibes. Anyone have links

send help

An Pham · 7 likes

Is anyone else tired of the hype around RAG vs long context, feels like every other post is about it :)

cost vs benefit matters here, we ran numbers on RAG vs long context and the payoff came later than expected

lol my cat has stronger opinions on it than I do

wait until you see the invoice

Ananya Rao · 1 likes

Been there. Choosing between RAG and long context sounds simple until you try it with real constraints.

can you share what you changed

we saw the opposite honestly

I do this for a living, and the biggest costs with either approach are the things nobody puts in the demo.

this. so much this

Same experience here

I'm more of an enthusiast than a pro, but comparing RAG with long context has been fun to tinker with on weekends :)

lol my cat has stronger opinions on it than I do

my wallet felt that