GTE Large English v1.5
434M-parameter Apache 2.0 encoder with an 8K context window
About
GTE-large-en-v1.5 is Alibaba's workhorse English embedding model: a 434M-parameter encoder producing 1024-dimensional vectors over an 8192-token window — a long context for its size class. Alibaba reports an MTEB average of 65.39, ahead of its BGE and E5 contemporaries at similar scale, and it is Apache 2.0 licensed. It is a pragmatic middle ground: far cheaper to serve than 7B LLM embedders, more capable than 335M models, and the long window reduces chunking headaches. The honest limits: it needs no instruction prefixes but also gains nothing from them, and it has been eclipsed on raw quality by the newer LLM-based GTE models from the same lab.
Specs
Context window
Pricing
Free quota
API access
Weights
Released
Benchmarks
MTEB average 65.39 (Alibaba-reported)
Provider-reported unless a source says otherwise. Benchmarks are marketing-adjacent by nature — treat them as directional.
Use cases
Trust score — 7/10
Scored 7/10 (verified tier, metrics-v1). Evidence: 434M params, 1024 dims, 8192 context, Apache 2.0, and Jan 9, 2024 release corroborated in a research comparison table and an independent RAG-stack synthesis read this session.; MTEB 65.39 is Alibaba-reported.; Eclipsed by Alibaba's own LLM-based GTE models — noted as a limitation..