Zero-Shot vs. Few-Shot Prompting in AI - What’s the Difference & Why It Matters?

Tanu Varshney
Sep 17
2 min read

One of the biggest questions I get asked about AI is:

“How do prompts actually influence the output?”

The answer comes down to how much context you give the model

and that’s where Zero-Shot, Few-Shots come in.

🔹 Zero-Shot Prompting

Zero-Shot means: no examples, just instructions.

The model relies purely on its pre-trained knowledge to answer.

Example : Writing Code

Prompt:“Write a Python function that fetches weather data for a given city.”

Best for:

Common tasks (summarization, standard coding, quick explanations).
Speed over precision.

⚠️ Pitfall: Outputs can be inconsistent in structure or style.

🔹 Few-Shot Prompting

Few-Shot means: show the model a few examples first so it learns the style, structure, or logic you want.

Example : Consistent Code Style

# Example 1: Fetch stock price
def get_stock_price(symbol):  
    response = requests.get(f"https://api.stock.com/{symbol}")  
    return response.json()["price"]  

# Example 2: Fetch user profile
def get_user_profile(user_id):  
    response = requests.get(f"https://api.users.com/{user_id}")  
    return response.json()["profile"]  

# Task: Fetch weather data for a given city
def get_weather(city):  
    ???

Best for:

Structured or repeatable outputs (SQL, JSON, APIs).
Consistency in style and format.
Guiding the model when tasks are tricky.

Chain-of-Thought (CoT) Prompting

Chain-of-Thought means: asking the model to “think step by step” before giving the final answer.

This is especially powerful for reasoning tasks like math, logic puzzles, or multi-step queries.

Example : Math Problem

Prompt:“If there are 12 apples and 3 people share them equally, how many apples does each person get? Explain step by step.”

Output:

There are 12 apples.
Divide 12 by 3.
12 ÷ 3 = 4.
Each person gets 4 apples.

Best for:

Complex reasoning (math, logic, planning).
Preventing “hallucinated shortcuts.”

🔹 Few-Shot Chain-of-Thought (Few-Shot-CoT)

This is the most powerful combo:

You give examples, and
You ask the model to show its reasoning.

Example : Few-Shot-CoT for Word Problems

Example 1:  
Question: A car travels 60 km in 2 hours. What is its speed?  
Answer: 
Step 1: Speed = Distance ÷ Time.  
Step 2: 60 ÷ 2 = 30.  
Answer: 30 km/h.  

Example 2:  
Question: A train covers 120 km in 4 hours. What is its speed?  
Answer: 
Step 1: Speed = Distance ÷ Time.  
Step 2: 120 ÷ 4 = 30.  
Answer: 30 km/h.  

Question: A bike covers 90 km in 3 hours. What is its speed?  
Answer:

Now the model will follow your reasoning style exactly.

Best for: