# ms-marco-MiniLM-L4-v2 vs ms-marco-MiniLM-L6-v2: GPU Cost Compared Source: https://savrn.com/models/compare/ms-marco-minilm-l4-v2-vs-ms-marco-minilm-l6-v2 Markdown alternate of the page above; the site index is https://savrn.com/llms.txt --- | Field | [ms-marco-MiniLM-L4-v2](https://savrn.com/models/ms-marco-minilm-l4-v2) cross-encoder/ms-marco-MiniLM-L4-v2 | [ms-marco-MiniLM-L6-v2](https://savrn.com/models/ms-marco-minilm-l6-v2) cross-encoder/ms-marco-MiniLM-L6-v2 | | --- | --- | --- | | Publisher | Sentence Transformers - Cross-Encoders | Sentence Transformers - Cross-Encoders | | Task | Text ranking | Text ranking | | Modality | Other | Other | | Parameters, as reported | 19M parameters | 23M parameters | | Architecture | BertForSequenceClassification | BertForSequenceClassification | | Library | sentence-transformers | sentence-transformers | | Context length | 512 tokens | 512 tokens | | Repository size | 750.7 MB | 890.2 MB | | Artifact formats | safetensors, onnx, openvino, pytorch, jax | safetensors, onnx, openvino, pytorch, jax | | License | apache-2.0 | apache-2.0 | | Access | Open weights, no gate | Open weights, no gate | | Memory at 16-bit (weights and margin) | 0 GB | 0.1 GB | | Cheapest GPUs at 16-bit, per hour | 1x MI300X, $1.85 | 1x MI300X, $1.85 | | Memory at 4-bit (weights and margin) | 0 GB | 0 GB | | Cheapest GPUs at 4-bit, per hour | 1x MI300X, $1.85 | 1x MI300X, $1.85 | | Revision viewed | 777b2f369bc1 | 233902d25c44 | | Downloads reported by the hub | 5.2M | 71.4M | | Last observed | 2026-10-24 | 2026-10-24 | An evaluation row appears only where at least two of these models report the same benchmark with the same stated configuration, metric, unit and setup. Different evaluators stay named in each cell. Values are shown as reported: no unit conversion, no ranking. ## SAVRN's Notes on ms-marco-MiniLM-L4-v2 This is one of the most used rerankers anywhere: about 4.8 million downloads a month. A cross-encoder reads the query and each candidate passage together, and this four-layer MiniLM version at 19M parameters is small enough to rerank dozens of results in milliseconds on a CPU. Apache 2.0 allows commercial use. It is trained on MS MARCO, English web search. For English retrieval pipelines, adding it after first-stage search is one of the cheapest quality gains available; the six- and twelve-layer versions trade a little speed for accuracy. SAVRN Research, 2026-09-18 ## SAVRN's Notes on ms-marco-MiniLM-L6-v2 Once a first-pass search has returned its candidates, this cross-encoder puts them in order, reading the query with each passage and handing them back sorted. At 23M parameters it needs 0.1 GB at 16-bit and rounds to nothing at 8-bit or 4-bit. For $1.85 an hour on demand, the cheapest setup we price is a 192 GB MI300X, a card this ranker would leave almost empty; its sensible home is a corner of a GPU you already pay for. Apache 2.0 puts no fence around commercial use, so you can retrain it on your query logs and redistribute the result, keeping the license and NOTICE files intact and stating what changed. Two checks: the 512-token context must hold the query and the passage together, and the lineage runs to cross-encoder/ms-marco-MiniLM-L12-v2 with sentence-transformers/msmarco as the training set. Access is open and the files were last updated 2026-08-09. SAVRN Research, 2026-09-18 ## Questions ### Which is larger, ms-marco-MiniLM-L4-v2 or ms-marco-MiniLM-L6-v2? ms-marco-MiniLM-L6-v2 (23M parameters) is larger than ms-marco-MiniLM-L4-v2 (19M parameters), by the parameter counts their publishers report. ### Which is cheaper to run, ms-marco-MiniLM-L4-v2 or ms-marco-MiniLM-L6-v2? At 4-bit, ms-marco-MiniLM-L4-v2 fits on 1x MI300X from $1.85 an hour and ms-marco-MiniLM-L6-v2 on 1x MI300X from $1.85 an hour, at the lowest on-demand prices the SAVRN Index lists. ### Can I use ms-marco-MiniLM-L4-v2 commercially? Yes. ms-marco-MiniLM-L4-v2 is released under Apache License 2.0. The Apache License 2.0 is a permissive open-source license. It permits commercial use, modification and redistribution. It requires keeping the license and copyright notices and any NOTICE file, stating significant changes, and it includes an express patent grant from contributors. ### Can I use ms-marco-MiniLM-L6-v2 commercially? Yes. ms-marco-MiniLM-L6-v2 is released under Apache License 2.0. The Apache License 2.0 is a permissive open-source license. It permits commercial use, modification and redistribution. It requires keeping the license and copyright notices and any NOTICE file, stating significant changes, and it includes an express patent grant from contributors. ## Related Comparisons - [ms-marco-MiniLM-L12-v2 vs ms-marco-MiniLM-L4-v2](https://savrn.com/models/compare/ms-marco-minilm-l12-v2-vs-ms-marco-minilm-l4-v2) - [ms-marco-MiniLM-L2-v2 vs ms-marco-MiniLM-L4-v2](https://savrn.com/models/compare/ms-marco-minilm-l2-v2-vs-ms-marco-minilm-l4-v2) - [ms-marco-MiniLM-L12-v2 vs ms-marco-MiniLM-L6-v2](https://savrn.com/models/compare/ms-marco-minilm-l12-v2-vs-ms-marco-minilm-l6-v2) - [ms-marco-MiniLM-L2-v2 vs ms-marco-MiniLM-L6-v2](https://savrn.com/models/compare/ms-marco-minilm-l2-v2-vs-ms-marco-minilm-l6-v2)