Model reference · open weights

Qwen3-Embedding

Embeddings Qwen Embeddings 3 builds Open weights 223k dl/mo

Qwen3-Embedding is an open-weight embedding model from Qwen. Qwen3-Embedding-8B (BF16) weighs 15.1 GB; the smallest configuration that runs it is RTX 4090 24 GB.

For self-hosting, compare this build's requirements below with the GPU you plan to rent.

  • Qwen3-Embedding-4B is a 4.0B parameter text embedding model developed by Qwen for feature extraction tasks such as text retrieval, classification, and clustering.
  • It supports over 100 languages and has a context length of 40960 tokens.
  • The model is released under the Apache-2.0 license.

Summary of the unsloth/Qwen3-Embedding-4B model card, 2026-10-01. The estimate below is for another build of the family.

What it is

Released byQwen
Released2026-01-22
Parameters4.0B
VRAM15.1 GB for the weights

What it runs on

Memory and cards for Qwen3-Embedding-8B (BF16)

15.1 GBweights, file size
1.1 GBruntime overhead
CardRunsMemory
RTX 3060 12 GB … RTX 4060 Ti 16 GBdoes not fit
RTX 3090 24 GBfits23.4 GB
RTX 4090 24 GBfits23.4 GB
RTX 5090 32 GBfits31.0 GB
L40S 48 GBfits44.0 GB
A100 80 GBfits78.2 GB
H100 80 GBfits78.1 GB
RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GBfits93.8 GB
DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB unifiedfits107 GB
H200 141 GBfits138 GB
B200 180 GBfits176 GB

Builds

Sizes, precisions & builds

BuildParamsPrecisionWeightsSmallest setup
Qwen3-Embedding-4B ↗
packaged by unsloth
4.0BBF16 8.0 GBRTX 3060 12 GB
Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B ↗
packaged by unsloth
596MBF16 1.2 GBRTX 3060 12 GB
Qwen3-Embedding-8B (above) ↗
packaged by unsloth
7.6BBF16 15.1 GBRTX 4090 24 GB

From the model card

What Qwen says about Qwen3-Embedding

Read the model card

Highlights

The Qwen3 Embedding model series is the latest proprietary model of the Qwen family, specifically designed for text embedding and ranking tasks. Building upon the dense foundational models of the Qwen3 series, it provides a comprehensive range of text embeddings and reranking models in various sizes (0.6B, 4B, and 8B). This series inherits the exceptional multilingual capabilities, long-text understanding, and reasoning skills of its foundational model. The Qwen3 Embedding series represents significant advancements in multiple text embedding and ranking tasks, including text retrieval, code retrieval, text classification, text clustering, and bitext mining.

Exceptional Versatility: The embedding model has achieved state-of-the-art performance across a wide range of downstream application evaluations. The 8B size embedding model ranks No.1 in the MTEB multilingual leaderboard (as of June 5, 2025, score 70.58), while the reranking model excels in various text retrieval scenarios.

Multilingual Capability: The Qwen3 Embedding series offer support for over 100 languages, thanks to the multilingual capabilites of Qwen3 models. This includes various programming languages, and provides robust multilingual, cross-lingual, and code retrieval capabilities.

Model Overview

Qwen3-Embedding-4B has the following features:

  • Model Type: Text Embedding
  • Supported Languages: 100+ Languages
  • Number of Paramaters: 4B
  • Context Length: 32k
  • Embedding Dimension: Up to 2560, supports user-defined output dimensions ranging from 32 to 2560

For more details, including benchmark evaluation, hardware requirements, and inference performance, please refer to our blog, GitHub.

Qwen3 Embedding Series Model list

Model TypeModelsSizeLayersSequence LengthEmbedding DimensionMRL SupportInstruction Aware
Text EmbeddingQwen3-Embedding-0.6B0.6B2832K1024YesYes
Text EmbeddingQwen3-Embedding-4B4B3632K2560YesYes
Text EmbeddingQwen3-Embedding-8B8B3632K4096YesYes
Text RerankingQwen3-Reranker-0.6B0.6B2832K--Yes
Text RerankingQwen3-Reranker-4B4B3632K--Yes
Text RerankingQwen3-Reranker-8B8B3632K--Yes

Note:

  • MRL Support indicates whether the embedding model supports custom dimensions for the final embedding.
  • Instruction Aware notes whether the embedding or reranking model supports customizing the input instruction according to different tasks.
  • Our evaluation indicates that, for most downstream tasks, using instructions (instruct) typically yields an improvement of 1% to 5% compared to not using them. Therefore, we recommend that developers create tailored instructions specific to their tasks and scenarios. In multilingual contexts, we also advise users to write their instructions in English, as most instructions utilized during the model training process were originally written in English.

Usage

With Transformers versions earlier than 4.51.0, you may encounter the following error:

KeyError: 'qwen3'

Sentence Transformers Usage

# Requires transformers>=4.51.0
# Requires sentence-transformers>=2.7.0

from sentence_transformers import SentenceTransformer

# Load the model
model = SentenceTransformer("Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-4B")

# We recommend enabling flash_attention_2 for better acceleration and memory saving,
# together with setting `padding_side` to "left":
# model = SentenceTransformer(
#     "Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-4B",
#     model_kwargs={"attn_implementation": "flash_attention_2", "device_map": "auto"},
#     tokenizer_kwargs={"padding_side": "left"},
# )

# The queries and documents to embed
queries = [
    "What is the capital of China?",
    "Explain gravity",
]
documents = [
    "The capital of China is Beijing.",
    "Gravity is a force that attracts two bodies towards each other. It gives weight to physical objects and is responsible for the movement of planets around the sun.",
]

# Encode the queries and documents. Note that queries benefit from using a prompt
# Here we use the prompt called "query" stored under `model.prompts`, but you can
# also pass your own prompt via the `prompt` argument
query_embeddings = model.encode(queries, prompt_name="query")
document_embeddings = model.encode(documents)

# Compute the (cosine) similarity between the query and document embeddings
similarity = model.similarity(query_embeddings, document_embeddings)
print(similarity)
# tensor([[0.7534,

Quoted from the model card on Hugging Face. The full card is behind the Hugging Face link above.

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