Braintrust vs. Vellum

Braintrust and Vellum are two AI development platforms with distinct strengths. Braintrust focuses on LLM evaluation, helping teams refine and optimize AI models, while Vellum provides a low-code approach to prompt management, making it easier to experiment with AI-driven workflows. While both platforms offer useful capabilities, they also have limitations that may require additional tools and integrations to create a complete AI development environment.

For teams looking for a more robust and scalable solution, there is another option to consider. Sandgarden combines the best aspects of both Braintrust and Vellum while addressing their shortcomings, offering a more comprehensive AI development experience. In this comparison, we’ll break down the differences between Braintrust and Vellum while also exploring how an alternative like Sandgarden can provide a more seamless and scalable approach.

Braintrust’s AI testing tools compared with Vellum’s low-code AI prompt management system.

Feature Comparison

Prompt Management

LLM Evaluation

Version Control

Analytics

Tracing

Metrics

Logging

API First

Self-Hosted

On-Prem Deployment

Dedicated Infrastructure

Access Control

SSO

Data Encryption

Braintrust

Braintrust offers an LLM evaluation suite, providing tools for testing and optimizing model performance over time. With a focus on experimentation and a user-friendly testing library, users can quantify results against AI initiatives.

At the core of Braintrust is a software development kit (SDK) that integrates into existing infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines. This enables continuous evaluations that offer insights into LLM accuracy and reliability. As a third-party evaluator Braintrust is model agnostic, allowing it to work across multiple systems and platforms.

That said, Braintrust is not without its drawbacks:

Limited ability to move workloads to production
Limited scalability for large-scale operations
Unwieldy for less technical users

View more Braintrust alternatives

Vellum

Vellum offers a visual interface to generate AI workflows simply without extensive experience with LLMs. This allows engineering and product teams to effectively collaborate on delivering AI solutions for various business needs.

Vellum excels in simplifying the basic processes for working with LLMs. Prompt engineering, semantic search, prompt chaining, and RAG are basic tools useful to any business looking to experiment with AI. Ease of use is augmented by thorough documentation and tutorials, further enabling users of various abilities to contribute to a company’s AI initiatives.

That said, Vellum is not without its drawbacks:

Less capable with complex implementations
Limited flexibility and control over underlying infrastructure
Hosted deployment options only

View more Vellum alternatives

Sandgarden

Sandgarden provides production-ready infrastructure by automatically crafting the pipeline of tools and processes needed to experiment with AI. This helps businesses move from test to production without figuring out how to deploy, monitor, and scale the stack.

With Sandgarden you get an enterprise AI runtime engine that lets you stand up a test, refine and iterate, all in support of determining how to accelerate your business processes quickly. Time to value is their ethos and as such the platform is freely available to try without going through a sales process.

Conclusion

Braintrust and Vellum each bring valuable features to AI development, but both fall short of delivering a truly comprehensive solution. Braintrust specializes in LLM evaluation, providing teams with tools to assess and fine-tune their AI models. However, it lacks robust infrastructure support, advanced analytics, and full security controls, making it challenging to scale effectively. Vellum, on the other hand, offers a low-code approach to prompt engineering, making it accessible for users who want a streamlined workflow, but it sacrifices deeper functionality such as version control, detailed logging, and enterprise-grade security.

Sandgarden outperforms both by providing a fully integrated AI development ecosystem that eliminates the need for external tools and workarounds. Unlike Braintrust and Vellum, Sandgarden delivers a seamless experience with built-in analytics, structured prompt management, full version control, and advanced security features, including encryption and access control. With its API-first approach and scalable deployment options, Sandgarden empowers AI teams to move faster, build smarter, and deploy more securely—making it the ultimate choice for those seeking both flexibility and power in their AI workflows.