BAAI/bge-m3 vs zembed-1
Detailed comparison between BAAI/bge-m3 and zembed-1. See which embedding best meets your accuracy and performance needs. If you want to compare these models on your data, try Agentset.
Model Comparison
zembed-1 takes the lead.
Both BAAI/bge-m3 and zembed-1 are powerful embedding models designed to improve retrieval quality in RAG applications. However, their performance characteristics differ in important ways.
Why zembed-1:
- zembed-1 has 109 higher ELO rating
- BAAI/bge-m3 delivers better accuracy (nDCG@10: 0.674 vs 0.619)
- BAAI/bge-m3 is 216ms faster on average
- zembed-1 has a 14.9% higher win rate
Overview
Key metrics
ELO Rating
Overall ranking quality
BAAI/bge-m3
zembed-1
Win Rate
Head-to-head performance
BAAI/bge-m3
zembed-1
Accuracy (nDCG@10)
Ranking quality metric
BAAI/bge-m3
zembed-1
Average Latency
Response time
BAAI/bge-m3
zembed-1
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Visual Performance Analysis
Performance
ELO Rating Comparison
Win/Loss/Tie Breakdown
Accuracy Across Datasets (nDCG@10)
Latency Distribution (ms)
Breakdown
How the models stack up
| Metric | BAAI/bge-m3 | zembed-1 | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall Performance | |||
| ELO Rating | 1480 | 1590 | Overall ranking quality based on pairwise comparisons |
| Win Rate | 44.3% | 59.2% | Percentage of comparisons won against other models |
| Pricing & Availability | |||
| Price per 1M tokens | $0.010 | $0.050 | Cost per million tokens processed |
| Dimensions | 1024 | 2048 | Vector embedding dimensions (lower is more efficient) |
| Release Date | 2024-01-27 | 2026-03-02 | Model release date |
| Accuracy Metrics | |||
| Avg nDCG@10 | 0.674 | 0.619 | Normalized discounted cumulative gain at position 10 |
| Performance Metrics | |||
| Avg Latency | 34ms | 250ms | Average response time across all datasets |
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import { Agentset } from "agentset";
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const ns = agentset.namespace("ns_1234");
const results = await ns.search(
"What is multi-head attention?"
);
for (const result of results) {
console.log(result.text);
}Dataset Performance
By field
Comprehensive comparison of accuracy metrics (nDCG, Recall) and latency percentiles for each benchmark dataset.
business reports
| Metric | BAAI/bge-m3 | zembed-1 | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accuracy Metrics | |||
| nDCG@5 | 0.000 | 0.000 | Ranking quality at top 5 results |
| nDCG@10 | 0.000 | 0.000 | Ranking quality at top 10 results |
| Recall@5 | 0.000 | 0.000 | % of relevant docs in top 5 |
| Recall@10 | 0.000 | 0.000 | % of relevant docs in top 10 |
| Latency Metrics | |||
| Mean | 27ms | 250ms | Average response time |
| P50 | 27ms | 250ms | 50th percentile (median) |
| P90 | 27ms | 250ms | 90th percentile |
DBPedia
| Metric | BAAI/bge-m3 | zembed-1 | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accuracy Metrics | |||
| nDCG@5 | 0.801 | 0.832 | Ranking quality at top 5 results |
| nDCG@10 | 0.785 | 0.811 | Ranking quality at top 10 results |
| Recall@5 | 0.061 | 0.062 | % of relevant docs in top 5 |
| Recall@10 | 0.122 | 0.121 | % of relevant docs in top 10 |
| Latency Metrics | |||
| Mean | 21ms | 250ms | Average response time |
| P50 | 21ms | 250ms | 50th percentile (median) |
| P90 | 21ms | 250ms | 90th percentile |
FiQa
| Metric | BAAI/bge-m3 | zembed-1 | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accuracy Metrics | |||
| nDCG@5 | 0.743 | 0.862 | Ranking quality at top 5 results |
| nDCG@10 | 0.755 | 0.855 | Ranking quality at top 10 results |
| Recall@5 | 0.608 | 0.668 | % of relevant docs in top 5 |
| Recall@10 | 0.667 | 0.712 | % of relevant docs in top 10 |
| Latency Metrics | |||
| Mean | 22ms | 250ms | Average response time |
| P50 | 22ms | 250ms | 50th percentile (median) |
| P90 | 22ms | 250ms | 90th percentile |
SciFact
| Metric | BAAI/bge-m3 | zembed-1 | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accuracy Metrics | |||
| nDCG@5 | 0.571 | 0.767 | Ranking quality at top 5 results |
| nDCG@10 | 0.599 | 0.777 | Ranking quality at top 10 results |
| Recall@5 | 0.645 | 0.888 | % of relevant docs in top 5 |
| Recall@10 | 0.759 | 0.929 | % of relevant docs in top 10 |
| Latency Metrics | |||
| Mean | 37ms | 250ms | Average response time |
| P50 | 37ms | 250ms | 50th percentile (median) |
| P90 | 37ms | 250ms | 90th percentile |
MSMARCO
| Metric | BAAI/bge-m3 | zembed-1 | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accuracy Metrics | |||
| nDCG@5 | 0.956 | 0.955 | Ranking quality at top 5 results |
| nDCG@10 | 0.941 | 0.946 | Ranking quality at top 10 results |
| Recall@5 | 0.121 | 0.123 | % of relevant docs in top 5 |
| Recall@10 | 0.219 | 0.223 | % of relevant docs in top 10 |
| Latency Metrics | |||
| Mean | 51ms | 250ms | Average response time |
| P50 | 51ms | 250ms | 50th percentile (median) |
| P90 | 51ms | 250ms | 90th percentile |
ARCD
| Metric | BAAI/bge-m3 | zembed-1 | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accuracy Metrics | |||
| nDCG@5 | 0.879 | 0.851 | Ranking quality at top 5 results |
| nDCG@10 | 0.879 | 0.858 | Ranking quality at top 10 results |
| Recall@5 | 0.960 | 0.920 | % of relevant docs in top 5 |
| Recall@10 | 0.960 | 0.940 | % of relevant docs in top 10 |
| Latency Metrics | |||
| Mean | 48ms | 250ms | Average response time |
| P50 | 48ms | 250ms | 50th percentile (median) |
| P90 | 48ms | 250ms | 90th percentile |
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