qwen3-embed 1.1.2

Lightweight Qwen3 text embedding & reranking via ONNX Runtime (fork of fastembed)

qwen3-embed

Lightweight Qwen3 text embedding & reranking via ONNX Runtime. Trimmed fork of fastembed, keeping only Qwen3 models.

Supported Models

ONNX (default)

Model	Type	Dims	Max Tokens	Size
Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B	Embedding	32-1024 (MRL)	32768	573 MB
Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B-Q4F16	Embedding	32-1024 (MRL)	32768	517 MB
Qwen/Qwen3-Reranker-0.6B	Reranker	-	40960	573 MB
Qwen/Qwen3-Reranker-0.6B-Q4F16	Reranker	-	40960	518 MB

GGUF (optional, requires llama-cpp-python)

Model	Type	Dims	Max Tokens	Size
Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B-GGUF	Embedding	32-1024 (MRL)	32768	378 MB
Qwen/Qwen3-Reranker-0.6B-GGUF	Reranker	-	40960	378 MB

HuggingFace Repos

Format	Embedding	Reranker
ONNX	n24q02m/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B-ONNX	n24q02m/Qwen3-Reranker-0.6B-ONNX
GGUF	n24q02m/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B-GGUF	n24q02m/Qwen3-Reranker-0.6B-GGUF

Installation

pip install qwen3-embed

# For GGUF support
pip install qwen3-embed[gguf]

Usage

Text Embedding

from qwen3_embed import TextEmbedding

# INT8 (default)
model = TextEmbedding(model_name="Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B")

# Q4F16 (smaller, slightly less accurate)
model = TextEmbedding(model_name="Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B-Q4F16")

# GGUF (requires: pip install qwen3-embed[gguf])
model = TextEmbedding(model_name="Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B-GGUF")

documents = [
    "Qwen3 is a multilingual embedding model.",
    "ONNX Runtime enables fast CPU inference.",
]

embeddings = list(model.embed(documents))
# Each embedding: numpy array of shape (1024,), L2-normalized

# Matryoshka Representation Learning (MRL) -- truncate to smaller dims
embeddings_256 = list(model.embed(documents, dim=256))
# Each embedding: numpy array of shape (256,), L2-normalized

# Query with instruction (for retrieval tasks)
queries = list(model.query_embed(
    ["What is Qwen3?"],
    task="Given a question, retrieve relevant passages",
))

Reranking

from qwen3_embed import TextCrossEncoder

reranker = TextCrossEncoder(model_name="Qwen/Qwen3-Reranker-0.6B")

query = "What is Qwen3?"
documents = [
    "Qwen3 is a series of large language models by Alibaba.",
    "The weather today is sunny.",
    "Qwen3-Embedding supports multilingual text embedding.",
]

scores = list(reranker.rerank(query, documents))
# scores: list of float in [0, 1], higher = more relevant

# Or rerank pairs directly
pairs = [
    ("What is AI?", "Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science."),
    ("What is ML?", "Machine learning is a subset of AI."),
]
pair_scores = list(reranker.rerank_pairs(pairs))

Key Features

• Last-token pooling: Uses the final token representation (with left-padding) instead of mean pooling.
• MRL support: Matryoshka Representation Learning allows truncating embeddings to any dimension from 32 to 1024 while preserving quality.
• Instruction-aware: Query embedding supports task instructions for better retrieval performance.
• Causal LM reranking: Reranker uses yes/no logit scoring via causal language model, producing calibrated [0, 1] scores.
• Multiple backends: ONNX Runtime (INT8, Q4F16) and GGUF (Q4_K_M via llama-cpp-python).
• GPU optional, no PyTorch: Runs on ONNX Runtime or llama-cpp-python -- no heavy ML framework required. Auto-detects GPU (CUDA, DirectML) when available.
• Multilingual: Both models support multi-language inputs.

GPU Acceleration

Both ONNX and GGUF backends auto-detect GPU when available (Device.AUTO is the default).

ONNX

Requires onnxruntime-gpu (CUDA) or onnxruntime-directml (Windows) instead of onnxruntime:

pip install onnxruntime-gpu  # NVIDIA CUDA
# or
pip install onnxruntime-directml  # Windows AMD/Intel/NVIDIA

from qwen3_embed import TextEmbedding, Device

# Auto-detect GPU (default)
model = TextEmbedding(model_name="Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B")

# Force CPU
model = TextEmbedding(model_name="Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B", cuda=Device.CPU)

# Force CUDA
model = TextEmbedding(model_name="Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B", cuda=Device.CUDA)

GGUF

GPU is handled by llama-cpp-python. Install with CUDA support:

CMAKE_ARGS="-DGGML_CUDA=on" pip install qwen3-embed[gguf]

from qwen3_embed import TextEmbedding, Device

# Auto-detect GPU (default, offloads all layers)
model = TextEmbedding(model_name="Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B-GGUF")

# Force CPU only
model = TextEmbedding(model_name="Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B-GGUF", cuda=Device.CPU)

Development

mise run setup   # Install deps + pre-commit hooks
mise run lint    # ruff check + format --check
mise run test    # pytest
mise run fix     # ruff auto-fix + format

License

Apache-2.0. Original fastembed by Qdrant.