Overview

Multilingual E5 Small is a lightweight, high-efficiency embedding model designed for cross-lingual sentence similarity and semantic search. Unlike larger LLMs, this model focuses specifically on mapping text from multiple languages into a shared vector space, making it an ideal choice for developers building RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) pipelines or clustering systems where low latency and minimal memory overhead are critical. It balances performance with a small footprint, allowing for deployment on edge devices or CPU-only environments without sacrificing significant retrieval accuracy. Integration is straightforward via standard sentence-transformer libraries, providing a scalable alternative to proprietary embedding APIs for international applications.

Highlights

Optimized for cross-lingual semantic search and similarity tasks
Low memory footprint enables fast CPU-based inference
Ideal for RAG pipelines requiring multilingual support
Permissive MIT license for flexible commercial integration
Efficient vectorization of text across diverse language pairs

Usage

Install

# Install Hugging Face transformers
pip install transformers torch

SDK Usage

# Load model with transformers
from transformers import AutoModel, AutoTokenizer

model = AutoModel.from_pretrained("intfloat/multilingual-e5-small")
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("intfloat/multilingual-e5-small")

Hugging Face Download

We recommend downloading the model via the Hugging Face CLI or Hub SDK.

Guidance：Before downloading, install huggingface_hub with:

Guidance

pip install -U huggingface_hub

CLI Download

Download the full repository

huggingface-cli download intfloat/multilingual-e5-small

Download a single file to a local folder (e.g. config.json into ./dir)

huggingface-cli download intfloat/multilingual-e5-small config.json --local-dir ./dir

See the official docs for more CLI options

SDK Download

# 模型下载
from huggingface_hub import snapshot_download
model_dir = snapshot_download('intfloat/multilingual-e5-small')

Git Download

Make sure git-lfs is installed first

Git Download

git lfs install
git clone https://huggingface.co/intfloat/multilingual-e5-small

To skip LFS large-file downloads, use:

Skip LFS

GIT_LFS_SKIP_SMUDGE=1 git clone https://huggingface.co/intfloat/multilingual-e5-small

Model files are hosted on the Hugging Face Hub — download directly via HF CLI / SDK / Git, not through this site.

PyTorch / Transformers Usage

Install Transformers

pip install -U transformers torch

Load the model and run inference

from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer

model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained('intfloat/multilingual-e5-small')
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained('intfloat/multilingual-e5-small')

Model Download

We recommend downloading the model via the ModelScope CLI or SDK.

Guidance：Before downloading, install ModelScope with:

Guidance

pip install modelscope

CLI Download

Download the full repository

modelscope download --model intfloat/multilingual-e5-small

Download a single file to a local folder (e.g. README.md into ./dir)

modelscope download --model intfloat/multilingual-e5-small README.md --local_dir ./dir

See the docs for more CLI options

SDK Download

# 模型下载
from modelscope import snapshot_download
model_dir = snapshot_download('intfloat/multilingual-e5-small')

Git Download

Make sure git-lfs is installed first

Git Download

git lfs install
git clone https://www.modelscope.cn/intfloat/multilingual-e5-small.git

To skip LFS large-file downloads, use:

Skip LFS

GIT_LFS_SKIP_SMUDGE=1 git clone https://www.modelscope.cn/intfloat/multilingual-e5-small.git

ModelScope 模型页直接下载模型文件；无需将模型文件放在本站服务器。

Notebook Quickstart

Install the ModelScope library

pip install "modelscope[audio,cv,nlp,multi-modal,science]" -f https://modelscope.oss-cn-beijing.aliyuncs.com/releases/repo.html

Load the model and run inference

from modelscope.pipelines import pipeline
from modelscope.utils.constant import Tasks

p = pipeline('text-generation', 'intfloat/multilingual-e5-small')

Full Documentation

来源: HuggingFace

---
language:

multilingual

af

am

ar

as

az

be

bg

bn

br

bs

ca

cs

cy

da

de

el

en

eo

es

et

eu

fa

fi

fr

fy

ga

gd

gl

gu

ha

he

hi

hr

hu

hy

id

is

it

ja

jv

ka

kk

km

kn

ko

ku

ky

la

lo

lt

lv

mg

mk

ml

mn

mr

ms

my

ne

nl

'no'

om

or

pa

pl

ps

pt

ro

ru

sa

sd

si

sk

sl

so

sq

sr

su

sv

sw

ta

te

th

tl

tr

ug

uk

ur

uz

vi

xh

yi

zh

license: mit
model-index:

name: intfloat/multilingual-e5-small

results:
- dataset:
config: en
name: MTEB AmazonCounterfactualClassification (en)
revision: e8379541af4e31359cca9fbcf4b00f2671dba205
split: test
type: mteb/amazon_counterfactual
metrics:
- type: accuracy
value: 73.79104477611939
- type: ap
value: 36.9996434842022
- type: f1
value: 67.95453679103099
task:
type: Classification
- dataset:
config: de
name: MTEB AmazonCounterfactualClassification (de)
revision: e8379541af4e31359cca9fbcf4b00f2671dba205
split: test
type: mteb/amazon_counterfactual
metrics:
- type: accuracy
value: 71.64882226980728
- type: ap
value: 82.11942130026586
- type: f1
value: 69.87963421606715
task:
type: Classification
- dataset:
config: en-ext
name: MTEB AmazonCounterfactualClassification (en-ext)
revision: e8379541af4e31359cca9fbcf4b00f2671dba205
split: test
type: mteb/amazon_counterfactual
metrics:
- type: accuracy
value: 75.8095952023988
- type: ap
value: 24.46869495579561
- type: f1
value: 63.00108480037597
task:
type: Classification
- dataset:
config: ja
name: MTEB AmazonCounterfactualClassification (ja)
revision: e8379541af4e31359cca9fbcf4b00f2671dba205
split: test
type: mteb/amazon_counterfactual
metrics:
- type: accuracy
value: 64.186295503212
- type: ap
value: 15.496804690197042
- type: f1
value: 52.07153895475031
task:
type: Classification
- dataset:
config: default
name: MTEB AmazonPolarityClassification
revision: e2d317d38cd51312af73b3d32a06d1a08b442046
split: test
type: mteb/amazon_polarity
metrics:
- type: accuracy
value: 88.699325
- type: ap
value: 85.27039559917269
- type: f1
value: 88.65556295032513
task:
type: Classification
- dataset:
config: en
name: MTEB AmazonReviewsClassification (en)
revision: 1399c76144fd37290681b995c656ef9b2e06e26d
split: test
type: mteb/amazon_reviews_multi
metrics:
- type: accuracy
value: 44.69799999999999
- type: f1
value: 43.73187348654165
task:
type: Classification
- dataset:
config: de
name: MTEB AmazonReviewsClassification (de)
revision: 1399c76144fd37290681b995c656ef9b2e06e26d
split: test
type: mteb/amazon_reviews_multi
metrics:
- type: accuracy
value: 40.245999999999995
- type: f1
value: 39.3863530637684
task:
type: Classification
- dataset:
config: es
name: MTEB AmazonReviewsClassification (es)
revision: 1399c76144fd37290681b995c656ef9b2e06e26d
split: test
type: mteb/amazon_reviews_multi
metrics:
- type: accuracy
value: 40.394
- type: f1
value: 39.301223469483446
task:
type: Classification
- dataset:
config: fr
name: MTEB AmazonReviewsClassification (fr)
revision: 1399c76144fd37290681b995c656ef9b2e06e26d
split: test
type: mteb/amazon_reviews_multi
metrics:
- type: accuracy
value: 38.864
- type: f1
value: 37.97974261868003
task:
type: Classification
- dataset:
config: ja
name: MTEB AmazonReviewsClassification (ja)
revision: 1399c76144fd37290681b995c656ef9b2e06e26d
split: test
type: mteb/amazon_reviews_multi
metrics:
- type: accuracy
value: 37.682
- type: f1
value: 37.07399369768313
task:
type: Classification
- dataset:
config: zh
name: MTEB AmazonReviewsClassification (zh)
revision: 1399c76144fd37290681b995c656ef9b2e06e26d
split: test
type: mteb/amazon_reviews_multi
metrics:
- type: accuracy
value: 37.504
- type: f1
value: 36.62317273874278
task:
type: Classification
- dataset:
config: default
name: MTEB ArguAna
revision: None
split: test
type: arguana
metrics:
- type: map_at_1
value: 19.061
- type: map_at_10
value: 31.703
- type: map_at_100
value: 32.967
- type: map_at_1000
value: 33.001000000000005
- type: map_at_3
value: 27.466
- type: map_at_5
value: 29.564
- type: mrr_at_1
value: 19.559
- type: mrr_at_10
value: 31.874999999999996
- type: mrr_at_100
value: 33.146
- type: mrr_at_1000
value: 33.18
- type: mrr_at_3
value: 27.667
- type: mrr_at_5
value: 29.74
- type: ndcg_at_1
value: 19.061
- type: ndcg_at_10
value: 39.062999999999995
- type: ndcg_at_100
value: 45.184000000000005
- type: ndcg_at_1000
value: 46.115
- type: ndcg_at_3
value: 30.203000000000003
- type: ndcg_at_5
value: 33.953
- type: precision_at_1
value: 19.061
- type: precision_at_10
value: 6.279999999999999
- type: precision_at_100
value: 0.9129999999999999
- type: precision_at_1000
value: 0.099
- type: precision_at_3
value: 12.706999999999999
- type: precision_at_5
value: 9.431000000000001
- type: recall_at_1
value: 19.061
- type: recall_at_10
value: 62.802
- type: recall_at_100
value: 91.323
- type: recall_at_1000
value: 98.72
- type: recall_at_3
value: 38.122
- type: recall_at_5
value: 47.155
task:
type: Retrieval
- dataset:
config: default
name: MTEB ArxivClusteringP2P
revision: a122ad7f3f0291bf49cc6f4d32aa80929df69d5d
split: test
type: mteb/arxiv-clustering-p2p
metrics:
- type: v_measure
value: 39.22266660528253
task:
type: Clustering
- dataset:
config: default
name: MTEB ArxivClusteringS2S
revision: f910caf1a6075f7329cdf8c1a6135696f37dbd53
split: test
type: mteb/arxiv-clustering-s2s
metrics:
- type: v_measure
value: 30.79980849482483
task:
type: Clustering
- dataset:
config: default
name: MTEB AskUbuntuDupQuestions
revision: 2000358ca161889fa9c082cb41daa8dcfb161a54
split: test
type: mteb/askubuntudupquestions-reranking
metrics:
- type: map
value: 57.8790068352054
- type: mrr
value: 71.78791276436706
task:
type: Reranking
- dataset:
config: default
name: MTEB BIOSSES
revision: d3fb88f8f02e40887cd149695127462bbcf29b4a
split: test
type: mteb/biosses-sts
metrics:
- type: cos_sim_pearson
value: 82.36328364043163
- type: cos_sim_spearman
value: 82.26211536195868
- type: euclidean_pearson
value: 80.3183865039173
- type: euclidean_spearman
value: 79.88495276296132
- type: manhattan_pearson
value: 80.14484480692127
- type: manhattan_spearman
value: 80.39279565980743
task:
type: STS
- dataset:
config: de-en
name: MTEB BUCC (de-en)
revision: d51519689f32196a32af33b075a01d0e7c51e252
split: test
type: mteb/bucc-bitext-mining
metrics:
- type: accuracy
value: 98.0375782881002
- type: f1
value: 97.86012526096033
- type: precision
value: 97.77139874739039
- type: recall
value: 98.0375782881002
task:
type: Bi

multilingual e5 small

Overview

Highlights

Usage

Hugging Face Download

CLI Download

SDK Download

Git Download

PyTorch / Transformers Usage

Model Download

CLI Download

SDK Download

Git Download

Notebook Quickstart

Full Documentation