Embeddings
Semantic search and vector representations for AI applications
Modelli embedding per ricerca semantica, RAG e clustering
I modelli embedding trasformano testo — o a volte immagini, codice o audio — in un vettore di numeri in virgola mobile di lunghezza fissa. Input simili finiscono vicini nello spazio degli embedding, input dissimili lontani. Si ricorre agli embedding per costruire ricerca semantica, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), raccomandazioni o clustering.
18 models available
BGE Large EN v1.5
BAAI (Beijing Academy of AI) open-weight English embedding model with 335M parameters. Returns 1024-dim vectors and was a top MTEB English retrieval model on release. The v1.5 update improved similarity distribution so it works well without a query instruction prefix for symmetric tasks. A widely used open alternative to hosted embeddings.
BGE-M3 (Multilingual)
BAAI multilingual embedding model covering 100+ languages with an 8192-token context. M3 stands for its multi-functionality (dense, sparse and ColBERT-style multi-vector retrieval), multilinguality and multi-granularity over long documents. Returns 1024-dim dense vectors and is a strong open choice for cross-lingual and long-text retrieval.
ESM-2 650M (Protein Embeddings)
Meta AI 650M-parameter protein language model trained on UniRef50 sequences. Feed it an amino-acid sequence and the per-residue hidden states act as learned protein embeddings, used for structure prediction, variant-effect and function tasks. This 33-layer checkpoint is the common balance of quality and cost in the ESM-2 family.
Nomic Embed Text v1.5
Nomic AI open embedding model with a fully reproducible training pipeline (open weights, data and code). Supports an 8192-token context and Matryoshka representation learning, so you can truncate the 768-dim output down to 64 dims with graceful quality loss. Uses task prefixes like search_query and search_document.
OpenAI text-embedding-3-large
OpenAI's highest-quality embedding model. Returns 3072-dim vectors by default and supports reducing dimensions via the dimensions parameter. Outperforms text-embedding-3-small and the older ada-002 on MTEB and multilingual MIRACL retrieval benchmarks, for cases where accuracy matters more than cost.
OpenAI text-embedding-3-small
OpenAI's small, low-cost embedding model. Returns 1536-dim vectors by default and supports shortening output dimensions via the dimensions parameter without retraining. Replaced text-embedding-ada-002 with better retrieval quality at a fraction of the price, and is the default choice for general-purpose semantic search and RAG.
PubMedBERT Embeddings (NeuML)
Sentence-transformers model fine-tuned from Microsoft PubMedBERT on PubMed title-abstract pairs by the NeuML team. Produces 768-dim sentence embeddings tuned for biomedical semantic search and similarity, and is the embedding backbone behind the paperai and txtai medical search tools.
SPECTER (Scientific Paper Embeddings)
AllenAI document-level embedding model for scientific papers. Built on SciBERT and trained on the citation graph so that papers citing each other land close together. Feed it a title plus abstract and it returns one 768-dim vector per paper, useful for recommendation, clustering and citation-based retrieval.
Voyage AI voyage-3
Voyage's general-purpose embedding model. 1024 dims, 32k context, strong retrieval performance.
BioBERT v1.2 (Biomedical Embeddings)
DMIS-Lab (Korea University) BERT-base initialized from English BERT and further pretrained on PubMed abstracts. Used as a feature extractor it yields 768-dim contextual embeddings tuned for biomedical text mining tasks such as NER, relation extraction and biomedical question answering.
BiomedBERT (PubMedBERT abstract)
Microsoft BiomedBERT (formerly PubMedBERT) pretrained from scratch on PubMed abstracts with a domain-specific vocabulary, rather than adapting a general model. As a feature extractor it gives 768-dim biomedical embeddings and set the original state of the art on the BLURB biomedical NLP benchmark.
Cohere embed-multilingual-v3
Cohere's multilingual embedding model. Supports 100+ languages with separate search and classification modes.
GTE Large EN v1.5
Alibaba (Tongyi Lab) general text embedding model. The v1.5 release extends the context to 8192 tokens and returns 1024-dim vectors, scoring competitively on MTEB while handling much longer inputs than typical 512-token encoders. A practical open model when documents exceed the usual short-context limit.
Jina Embeddings v3 (Multilingual)
Jina's frontier multilingual embedding model. 570M params, 8192 ctx, 89 languages, Matryoshka dims 128-1024.
Multilingual E5 Large
Microsoft E5 multilingual embedding model with 560M parameters, initialized from XLM-RoBERTa-large and trained with weakly supervised contrastive learning. Covers around 100 languages and returns 1024-dim vectors. It expects query: and passage: prefixes on inputs and is a popular open model for multilingual semantic search.
mxbai-embed-large-v1
Mixedbread's open-source 335M embedding model. Top MTEB benchmark for English retrieval at release.
SciBERT (scivocab uncased)
AllenAI BERT-base pretrained from scratch on 1.14M scientific papers (mostly biomedical and computer science) with its own scientific WordPiece vocabulary. Used as a feature extractor it gives 768-dim contextual embeddings tuned to scientific text, outperforming general BERT on tasks like NER and relation extraction in research corpora.
Voyage AI voyage-code-3
Voyage's code-specialized embedding model. Up to 32k context, Matryoshka 256-2048 dims, int8/binary support.
Top embeddings picks
Hand-picked across four common criteria — resolved against the live catalog so the picks track price and performance changes.
BAAI (Beijing Academy of AI) open-weight English embedding model with 335M parameters. Returns 1024-dim vectors and was a top MTEB English retrieval model on release. The v1.5 update improved similarity distribution so it works well without a query instruction prefix for symmetric tasks. A widely used open alternative to hosted embeddings.
Learn moreOpenAI's small, low-cost embedding model. Returns 1536-dim vectors by default and supports shortening output dimensions via the dimensions parameter without retraining. Replaced text-embedding-ada-002 with better retrieval quality at a fraction of the price, and is the default choice for general-purpose semantic search and RAG.
Learn moreVoyage's general-purpose embedding model. 1024 dims, 32k context, strong retrieval performance.
Learn moreOpenAI's small, low-cost embedding model. Returns 1536-dim vectors by default and supports shortening output dimensions via the dimensions parameter without retraining. Replaced text-embedding-ada-002 with better retrieval quality at a fraction of the price, and is the default choice for general-purpose semantic search and RAG.
Learn moreIl pricing è per token, simile alla generazione di testo ma tipicamente 10-100× più economico. I modelli flagship (OpenAI text-embedding-3-large, Voyage 3, Cohere Embed v3) costano €0,05-€0,15 per milione di token. Le opzioni open-weights (Jina V3, BGE, MxBai) costano sostanzialmente zero da far girare sulla propria infrastruttura. Un corpus RAG tipico di 10 milioni di token (circa 20.000 documenti) costa €0,50-€1,50 da embeddare una volta. Il ri-embedding a ogni upgrade del modello è il principale costo long-tail.
Il compromesso è dimensione, recall e prezzo. Embedding a dimensione più alta (3.072 o 4.096 dim) catturano più sfumature ma costano di più da memorizzare e cercare. I modelli a dimensione più bassa (256-768 dim) costano dieci volte meno e recuperano comunque il documento giusto il 90-95% delle volte nella maggior parte dei carichi di lavoro. Usate il flagship ad alta dimensione quando la qualità del retrieval è mission-critical (ricerca legale, Q&A medico); usate un modello economico quando potete tollerare il risultato mancato occasionale.
Attenzione alla dimensione dei chunk: la maggior parte dei modelli embedding rende meglio su chunk di 200-500 token. Embeddare un intero documento di 50 pagine come un singolo vettore fa perdere il significato per sezione. Embeddare troppo piccolo (sotto i 50 token) e i singoli chunk diventano rumorosi. Scegliete un chunker che rispetti i confini dei paragrafi e aggiunga una piccola sovrapposizione (10-20%) tra chunk.
Attenzione al mismatch multilingue: non tutti i modelli embedding parlano ogni lingua allo stesso modo. Se il vostro corpus è multilingue, scegliete un modello i cui dati di training coprano le vostre lingue — Jina V3, Cohere Multilingual e Voyage Multilingual sono i default sicuri.
Le top picks qui sopra coprono il flagship con il recall più alto, il modello di produzione più economico, l'opzione a dimensione più alta e l'indicizzatore più veloce.
Popular use cases
Common patterns built with embeddings on Railwail.
Related comparisons
Side-by-side reviews of the most-compared models in this category.
Frequently asked questions
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