Rivet vs. Athina

Rivet and Athina each offer distinct advantages in AI development, but they cater to different needs. Rivet simplifies workflow creation with a no-code approach, making it accessible for teams that want to build AI-powered applications without extensive coding. Athina, meanwhile, specializes in structured prompt management, helping teams refine AI model interactions. While both platforms serve valuable functions, they also come with limitations that may require additional tools to achieve a complete AI development setup.

However, there is another option that brings together the best of both while addressing their shortcomings. Sandgarden provides a more advanced and scalable AI development environment, offering greater flexibility and efficiency. This comparison will explore how Rivet and Athina stack up while also introducing an alternative that better meets the needs of AI teams looking for a comprehensive solution.

Rivet’s no-code AI builder compared with Athina’s structured prompt optimization.

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

Rivet

With Rivet developers can design, debug, and collaborate on LLM prompt graphs, and deploy them in their own environment. The tool’s graph-based approach helps teams quickly identify performance and reliability issues across a range of workflows.

As a prompt IDE, Rivet simplifies the iteration process and allows prompt engineers to work with software developers to build AI agents. Alongside this is Trivet, a testing library for programmatically running tests on Rivet projects, providing a way to validate the functionality of their graphs. In sum, Rivet helps businesses efficiently integrate performant and reliable AI powered workflows into their applications.

That said, Rivet is not without its drawbacks:

Limited ability to move workloads to production

Limited scalability for large-scale operations

Can be cumbersome with a fair amount of manual work needed

View more Rivet alternatives

Athina

Athina empowers teams to experiment, evaluate, and monitor AI-driven applications. With its internal IDE, Athina offers a suite of tools to create, manage, and evaluate datasets, prompts, and evaluations.

The platform also includes observability tools, allowing teams to monitor AI model performance, manage costs, and maintain quality over time. In sum, Athina helps businesses efficiently integrate high quality and reliable AI powered workflows into their applications.

That said, Athina is not without its drawbacks:

Onboarding requires a lot of trial and error
No seamless way of integrating customer data
Limited scalability for large-scale operations

View more Athina 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

Rivet and Athina each bring distinct strengths to AI development, but both fall short of delivering a fully integrated and scalable solution. Rivet provides a no-code visual programming interface that simplifies AI workflow creation, yet it lacks critical capabilities such as robust version control, enterprise-grade security, and advanced analytics. Athina, while effective for structured prompt management, does not offer comprehensive logging, model evaluation, or the deployment flexibility needed for production-level AI applications. As a result, teams relying on either platform often find themselves piecing together multiple tools to fill in functionality gaps.

Sandgarden eliminates these challenges by providing an all-in-one AI development platform that seamlessly integrates the best features of both Rivet and Athina while addressing their shortcomings. It includes built-in analytics, structured prompt management, and enterprise-grade security, ensuring that teams have everything they need in a single, streamlined environment. With an API-first architecture, full version control, and flexible deployment options, Sandgarden is designed for scalability and security. For teams looking for an AI solution that balances usability with deep technical capabilities, Sandgarden is the clear leader.