I don't consider a small 8B model to be worth fine-tuning. Fine-tuning is worthwhile when you have a larger model with capacity to add data, perhaps one that can even grow its layers with the data. In contrast, fine-tuning a small saturated model will easily cause it to forget older information.
All things considered, in relative terms, as much as I think fine-tuning would be nice, it will remain significantly more expensive than just making RAG or search calls. I say this while being a fan of fine-tuning.
