# Best multilingual ML model for semantic search?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-multilingual-ml-model-for-semantic-search/356667>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Tags:** elastic-stack-machine-learning\
**Created:** [April 3, 2024, 11:08am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-multilingual-ml-model-for-semantic-search/356667 "2024-04-03T11:08:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Chenko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/258eb7/32.png) [@Chenko](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Chenko)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2024, 11:08am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-multilingual-ml-model-for-semantic-search/356667/1 "2024-04-03T11:08:32Z")

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Hello!

As the title said I am looking for the best ML models to use for semantic search. I was wondering what models everyone here recommends. The models need to be multilingual!

I wrote this post because this seems to be the best place to ask this and to get a look at how many people use/recommend the same model.

Models I have currently tried  
ELSER -- Not multilingual  
E5-small -- Though small so it wont take up alot of space it still returns decent results.

I will be waiting for your responses!

Thanks,  
Chenko

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**Author:** ![valeriy42](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/valeriy42/32/82758_2.png) [@valeriy42](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/valeriy42)\
**Post date:** [April 8, 2024, 7:29am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-multilingual-ml-model-for-semantic-search/356667/2 "2024-04-08T07:29:53Z")

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Hello @Chenko,

our current recommendation is to use [multilingual-e5-small](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/machine-learning/current/ml-nlp-e5.html) for non-Englisch documents.

Regards,  
Valeriy

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Chenko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/258eb7/32.png) [@Chenko](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Chenko)\
**Post date:** [April 8, 2024, 8:30am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-multilingual-ml-model-for-semantic-search/356667/3 "2024-04-08T08:30:19Z")

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> [@valeriy42](#):
>
> our current recommendation is to use [multilingual-e5-small](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/machine-learning/current/ml-nlp-e5.html) for non-Englisch documents.

Okay but why not the [multilingual-e5-large](https://huggingface.co/intfloat/multilingual-e5-large) model?

Kr,  
Chenko

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [May 6, 2024, 8:31am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-multilingual-ml-model-for-semantic-search/356667/4 "2024-05-06T08:31:14Z")

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