Curiosity · AI Model

Cohere Rerank 3 (Multilingual)

Cohere Rerank 3 (Multilingual), released April 2024, is Cohere's cross-encoder reranking model. It takes a query and a batch of candidate documents and returns relevance scores that reorder the candidates before they are fed to an LLM. Unlike dense-vector embedders, a reranker reads both query and document jointly, producing sharper top-k ordering. v3 supports 100+ languages, handles long documents (up to 4k tokens), and is tuned for JSON, code, and tabular content as well as prose. Offered via the Cohere API and AWS Bedrock.

Model specs

Vendor
Cohere
Family
Rerank
Released
2024-04
Context window
4,096 tokens
Modalities
text
Input price
$2/M tok
Output price
n/a
Pricing as of
2026-04-20

Strengths

  • Cross-encoder joint scoring is more accurate than dense similarity
  • Handles 100+ languages
  • Tuned for non-prose content (code, tables, JSON)
  • Available on Cohere API and AWS Bedrock

Limitations

  • Closed model — API only
  • Higher per-request cost and latency than dense retrieval alone
  • Max 4k-token documents per candidate
  • Needs to be paired with a first-stage retriever

Use cases

  • RAG top-k reranking after a retriever returns candidates
  • Multilingual search over 100+ languages
  • Reranking over code, tables, and JSON
  • Enterprise search quality uplift

Benchmarks

BenchmarkScoreAs of
BEIR average NDCG@10 (over BM25)large uplift, SOTA commercial reranker at release2024-04
Multilingual Mr. TyDitop-tier across 11 languages2024-04

Frequently asked questions

What is Cohere Rerank 3 (Multilingual)?

A cross-encoder reranking model that rescores retrieval candidates against a query, supporting 100+ languages and non-prose content like code and tables.

Why rerank on top of a dense retriever?

Dense retrievers are fast but coarse. A cross-encoder reranker reads query and document together, producing much sharper top-k ordering at the cost of extra latency.

How do I access Rerank 3?

Via the Cohere API (`/rerank` endpoint), AWS Bedrock, or OCI Generative AI.

Sources

  1. Cohere — Introducing Rerank 3 — accessed 2026-04-20
  2. Cohere Rerank API docs — accessed 2026-04-20