Skip to content

Register now for

# YOLOv5 vs RTDETRv2: A Detailed Model Comparison

Choosing the optimal object detection model is a critical decision for any computer vision project. This page provides a detailed technical comparison between two powerful models: Ultralytics YOLOv5, an established industry standard known for its balance of speed and efficiency, and RTDETRv2, a transformer-based model designed for high accuracy. We will delve into their architectural differences, performance benchmarks, and ideal use cases to help you select the best model for your needs.

## Ultralytics YOLOv5: The Established Industry Standard

Author: Glenn Jocher
Organization: Ultralytics
Date: 2020-06-26
GitHub: https://github.com/ultralytics/yolov5
Docs: https://docs.ultralytics.com/models/yolov5/

Ultralytics YOLOv5 set a new benchmark for real-time object detection upon its release, quickly becoming a favorite among developers and researchers for its exceptional blend of speed, accuracy, and user-friendliness. Built entirely in PyTorch, it is highly optimized and easy to train, validate, and deploy.

### Architecture

YOLOv5 employs a classic CNN-based architecture that is both efficient and effective.

- Backbone: It uses a CSPDarknet53 backbone, which is a variant of Darknet optimized with Cross Stage Partial (CSP) connections to improve gradient flow and reduce computational cost.
- Neck: A Path Aggregation Network (PANet) is used for feature aggregation, effectively combining features from different scales to enhance detection of objects of various sizes.
- Head: The model uses an anchor-based detection head to predict bounding boxes, class probabilities, and objectness scores.

### Strengths

- Exceptional Speed and Efficiency: YOLOv5 is highly optimized for fast inference speeds, making it a top choice for real-time applications on a wide range of hardware, from CPUs to edge devices.
- Ease of Use: Renowned for its streamlined user experience, YOLOv5 offers a simple Python API and CLI, backed by extensive documentation.
- Well-Maintained Ecosystem: As an Ultralytics model, it benefits from a robust and actively developed ecosystem. This includes a large community, frequent updates, and seamless integration with tools like Ultralytics HUB for no-code training and deployment.
- Performance Balance: YOLOv5 achieves an excellent trade-off between speed and accuracy, making it highly practical for diverse real-world scenarios.
- Memory Efficiency: Compared to transformer-based models, YOLOv5 models generally require significantly less CUDA memory during training and are more memory-efficient during inference.
- Versatility: It supports multiple tasks, including object detection, instance segmentation, and image classification, all within a unified framework.
- Training Efficiency: The training process is fast and efficient, with readily available pre-trained weights on datasets like COCO to accelerate development.

### Weaknesses

- Accuracy on Complex Scenes: While highly accurate, it may be outperformed by newer, more complex architectures like RTDETRv2 on datasets with many small or occluded objects.
- Anchor-Based Design: Its reliance on predefined anchor boxes can sometimes require manual tuning to achieve optimal performance on datasets with unconventional object aspect ratios.

### Ideal Use Cases

YOLOv5 excels in applications where speed, resource efficiency, and rapid development are critical.

- Real-time Video Surveillance: Ideal for security alarm systems and monitoring live video feeds.
- Edge Computing: Its lightweight models are perfect for deployment on resource-constrained devices like Raspberry Pi and NVIDIA Jetson.
- Mobile Applications: Suitable for on-device inference in mobile apps.
- Industrial Automation: Powers quality control and AI in traffic management.

Learn more about YOLOv5

## RTDETRv2: High-Accuracy Real-Time Detection Transformer

Authors: Wenyu Lv, Yian Zhao, Qinyao Chang, Kui Huang, Guanzhong Wang, and Yi Liu
Organization: Baidu
Date: 2023-04-17 (Initial RT-DETR), 2024-07-24 (RT-DETRv2 improvements)
Arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.08069, https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.17140
GitHub: https://github.com/lyuwenyu/RT-DETR/tree/main/rtdetrv2_pytorch
Docs: https://github.com/lyuwenyu/RT-DETR/tree/main/rtdetrv2_pytorch#readme

RTDETRv2 (Real-Time Detection Transformer v2) is a state-of-the-art object detector that leverages the power of Vision Transformers (ViT) to achieve high accuracy while maintaining real-time performance on capable hardware.

### Architecture

RTDETRv2 utilizes a hybrid approach that combines the strengths of CNNs and Transformers.

- Backbone: It typically uses a CNN (like ResNet variants) for efficient initial feature extraction.
- Encoder-Decoder: A Transformer-based encoder-decoder structure processes the image features. It uses self-attention mechanisms to capture global context, allowing the model to better understand relationships between distant objects and complex scenes.

### Strengths

- High Accuracy: The transformer architecture enables RTDETRv2 to achieve excellent mAP scores, particularly on complex datasets with dense or small objects, such as those in satellite image analysis.
- Real-Time Capability: It is optimized to provide competitive inference speeds, especially when accelerated on powerful GPUs using tools like NVIDIA TensorRT.
- Robust Feature Extraction: By capturing global context, it performs well in challenging scenarios like occlusion, which is beneficial for applications like autonomous driving.

### Weaknesses

- High Computational Cost: RTDETRv2 generally has a higher parameter count and FLOPs compared to YOLOv5, demanding more significant computational resources like GPU memory and processing power.
- Training Complexity: Training transformer-based models is often more resource-intensive and slower than training CNNs. They typically require much more CUDA memory, making them less accessible for users with limited hardware.
- Inference Speed on CPU/Edge: While real-time on powerful GPUs, its performance can be significantly slower than YOLOv5 on CPUs or less powerful edge devices.
- Ecosystem and Usability: It lacks the extensive, unified ecosystem, tooling, and broad community support that Ultralytics provides for its YOLO models.

Learn more about RTDETRv2

## Performance Analysis: Speed vs. Accuracy

The key difference between YOLOv5 and RTDETRv2 lies in their design philosophy. YOLOv5 is engineered for an optimal balance of speed and accuracy across a wide range of hardware, making it incredibly versatile. In contrast, RTDETRv2 prioritizes achieving maximum accuracy, leveraging a more computationally intensive transformer architecture that performs best on high-end GPUs.

The table below highlights these differences. While RTDETRv2 models achieve higher mAP scores, YOLOv5 models, particularly the smaller variants, offer significantly faster inference times, especially on CPU. This makes YOLOv5 a more practical choice for applications where low latency and deployment on diverse hardware are essential.

Model | size (pixels) | mAPval 50-95 | Speed CPU ONNX (ms) | Speed T4 TensorRT10 (ms) | params (M) | FLOPs (B)
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
YOLOv5n | 640 | 28.0 | 73.6 | 1.12 | 2.6 | 7.7
YOLOv5s | 640 | 37.4 | 120.7 | 1.92 | 9.1 | 24.0
YOLOv5m | 640 | 45.4 | 233.9 | 4.03 | 25.1 | 64.2
YOLOv5l | 640 | 49.0 | 408.4 | 6.61 | 53.2 | 135.0
YOLOv5x | 640 | 50.7 | 763.2 | 11.89 | 97.2 | 246.4
RTDETRv2-s | 640 | 48.1 | - | 5.03 | 20 | 60
RTDETRv2-m | 640 | 51.9 | - | 7.51 | 36 | 100
RTDETRv2-l | 640 | 53.4 | - | 9.76 | 42 | 136
RTDETRv2-x | 640 | 54.3 | - | 15.03 | 76 | 259

## Conclusion and Recommendations

Both YOLOv5 and RTDETRv2 are formidable object detection models, but they serve different needs.

RTDETRv2 is an excellent choice for applications where achieving the highest possible accuracy is the primary goal, and substantial computational resources (i.e., high-end GPUs) are readily available for both training and deployment. Its transformer-based architecture gives it an edge in complex scenes.

However, for the vast majority of real-world applications, Ultralytics YOLOv5 presents a more compelling and practical solution. Its exceptional balance of speed and accuracy, combined with its low resource requirements, makes it suitable for a broader range of deployment scenarios. The key advantages of the well-maintained Ultralytics ecosystem—including ease of use, comprehensive documentation, active community support, and tools like Ultralytics HUB—significantly lower the barrier to entry and accelerate development time.

For developers seeking a modern, versatile, and highly efficient framework, newer Ultralytics models like YOLOv8 and YOLO11 build upon the strengths of YOLOv5, offering even better performance and more features. These models represent the state of the art in user-friendly, high-performance computer vision.

## Other Model Comparisons

If you are interested in exploring other models, check out these comparisons:

- YOLOv5 vs YOLOv7
- YOLOv5 vs YOLOv8
- YOLOv5 vs YOLOv9
- RT-DETR vs YOLOv8
- RT-DETR vs YOLO11
- EfficientDet vs YOLOv5

📅 Created 1 year ago ✏️ Updated 1 month ago

## Comments