# Improving the Classify Fine-tuning Results

:::callout{intent="danger"}
Cohere's fine-tuning feature was deprecated on September 15, 2025
:::

There are several things you need to take into account to achieve the best fine-tuned model for Classification, all of which are based on giving the model higher-quality data.

## Refining data quality

- **Text cleaning**: Improving the quality of the data is often the best investment you can make when solving a problem with machine learning. If the text contains symbols, URLs, or HTML code which are not needed for a specific task, for example, make sure to remove them from the trained file (and from the text you later send to the trained model).
- **Number of examples**: The minimum number of labeled examples is 40. Be aware, however, that the more examples you can include, the better!
- **Number of examples per class**: In addition to the overall number of examples, it's important to have many examples of each class in the dataset. You should include at least five examples per label.
- **Mix of examples in dataset**: We recommend that you have a balanced (roughly equal) number of examples per class in your dataset. Imbalanced data is a well-known problem in machine learning, and can lead to sub-optimal results.
- **Length of texts**: The context size for text is currently 512 tokens. Any tokens beyond this limit are truncated.
- **Deduplication**: Ensure that each labeled example in your dataset is unique.
- **High quality test set**: In the data upload step, upload a separate test set of examples that you want to see the model benchmarked on. These can be examples that were manually written or verified.

## Troubleshooting

We have a dedicated guide for troubleshooting fine-tuned models which is consistent for all the different model types and endpoints. Check it out [here](/guides/get-started-fine-tuning-fine-tuning).

## Related pages

- [Changelog](../changelog.md)
- [Cohere](../index.md)
- [Cohere API](./cohere-api-index.md)
- [Cohere Labs](./cohere-labs-index.md)
- [Cohere Platform](./cohere-platform-index.md)
- [Cookbooks](./cookbooks-index.md)
- [Deployment Options](./deployment-options-index.md)
- [Embeddings (Vectors, Search, Retrieval)](./embeddings-vectors-search-retrieval-index.md)
- [Get Started](./get-started-index.md)
- [Going to Production](./going-to-production-index.md)

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