# NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs vs ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed

> NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed's 13.7 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do embed text. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nvidia-nemo-retriever-vs-zeroentropy
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- Updated: 2026-10-09

NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed's 13.7 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do embed text.

- NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs: grade C, 61/100, rank #439 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/nvidia-nemo-retriever.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/nvidia-nemo-retriever.json
- ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed: grade F, 13.7/100, rank #839 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/zeroentropy.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/zeroentropy.json

## Which one, for what

### NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs (C)

Good for: Teams that already run NVIDIA GPUs and need embedding and reranking inside their own network, including page-image retrieval with the VL models.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 53 against 0
- Schema & documentation, 78 against 31
- Agent ergonomics, 73 against 20
- Security & auth, 55 against 25
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 0
- Maintenance & community, 57 against 5
- Transparency & trust, 71 against 52

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- No incidents deducted, where ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed loses 4 points for them

Watch for: The API has no authentication and no rate limiting. The security page leaves both to a proxy the deployer runs

### ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed (F)

Good for: Only as open weights for teams that can self-host a reranker or embedding model.

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: The hosted API was discontinued after 4 September 2026 and signups closed on 24 July 2026


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs | ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 53 | 0 | NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs +53 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 78 | 31 | NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs +47 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 73 | 20 | NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs +53 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 55 | 25 | NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs +30 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 0 | NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs +40 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 57 | 5 | NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs +52 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 71 | 52 | NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs +19 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -4 | |
| **Total** | | **61 · C** | **13.7 · F** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs | ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | NVIDIA | ZeroEntropy |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.zeroentropy.dev/v1/models/rerank` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary containers under the NVIDIA Software Licence Agreement and Product-Specific Terms for AI Products. Models carry their own licences, such as OpenMDW 1.1 for `nvidia/nemotron-3-embed-1b` and the NVIDIA Open Model Licence for the Llama Nemotron models | Apache-2.0 (SDKs and model weights) |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-08-05 | 2026-03-02 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-05-07 | 2025-10-07 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2025-11-04 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 134k PyPI/wk | 221k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 1/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs.** Self-hosted containers with OpenAPI 3.1 files, typed request fields, five embedding output types and a dated end-of-life list. The API has no authentication or rate limiting of its own, production use needs an NVIDIA AI Enterprise licence at $4,500 a GPU a year, and the release notes carry no dates.

**ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed.** All four models now open weights under Apache 2.0 on Hugging Face. The hosted API was discontinued after 4 September 2026 and signups closed on 24 July 2026.

## Before you call either

### NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs

1. Send `input_type` as `query` or `passage` on every embedding call. Asymmetric models return HTTP 400 without it, and the wrong value lowers retrieval accuracy per the docs
2. Do not send `dimensions` and `embedding_type` together, and send only 2048 or nothing for `dimensions` on `nvidia/nemotron-3-embed-1b`
3. Poll `/v1/health/ready` before the first call. The Docker health check can report unhealthy while the NIM is ready, per the 2.3 known issues
4. Check the image tag on NGC before pulling. The guide uses `nemotron-3-embed-1b:2.3`, and NGC's record for that image listed tags up to 2.2.2 on 8 October 2026
5. Put a proxy with authentication and TLS in front of port 8000, and sort `/v1/ranking` results yourself as the request has no top-n field

### ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed

1. Don't call api.zeroentropy.dev. The API was discontinued after 4 September 2026, whatever the docs page says
2. Self-host zerank-2 or zembed-1 from Hugging Face under Apache 2.0 if you want the same model
3. Pick a hosted reranker elsewhere if you can't self-host. ZeroEntropy's own guide names Cohere and Voyage
4. Re-embed the corpus if you move off zembed-1. Vectors from another model aren't compatible

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs or ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed?

NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed's 13.7 (F), and leads in every scored category.

### Do NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs and ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed need an API key?

NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs needs no key. ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed needs an API key.

### Can an agent call NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs and ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs. ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed has a hosted endpoint at https://api.zeroentropy.dev/v1/models/rerank.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nvidia-nemo-retriever-vs-zeroentropy.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nvidia-nemo-retriever-vs-zeroentropy.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "nvidia-nemo-retriever", "b": "zeroentropy"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare nvidia-nemo-retriever zeroentropy`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/nvidia-nemo-retriever.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/zeroentropy.json

## Other comparisons with NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs or ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed

- [Amazon Nova Multimodal Embeddings vs NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-nova-embeddings-vs-nvidia-nemo-retriever.md)
- [Amazon Nova Multimodal Embeddings vs ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-nova-embeddings-vs-zeroentropy.md)
- [Cohere Embed and Rerank vs NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-embed-vs-nvidia-nemo-retriever.md)
- [Cohere Embed and Rerank vs ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-embed-vs-zeroentropy.md)
- [Gemini Embedding vs NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gemini-embedding-vs-nvidia-nemo-retriever.md)
- [Gemini Embedding vs ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gemini-embedding-vs-zeroentropy.md)
- [Jina Embeddings and Reranker vs NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jina-embeddings-vs-nvidia-nemo-retriever.md)
- [Jina Embeddings and Reranker vs ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jina-embeddings-vs-zeroentropy.md)
- [Mistral Embed and Codestral Embed vs NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mistral-embeddings-vs-nvidia-nemo-retriever.md)
- [Mistral Embed and Codestral Embed vs ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mistral-embeddings-vs-zeroentropy.md)
- [Nomic Embed vs NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nomic-embed-vs-nvidia-nemo-retriever.md)
- [Nomic Embed vs ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nomic-embed-vs-zeroentropy.md)
- [NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs vs OpenAI embeddings](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nvidia-nemo-retriever-vs-openai-embeddings.md)
- [NVIDIA NeMo Retriever Embedding and Reranking NIMs vs Voyage AI embeddings and rerankers](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nvidia-nemo-retriever-vs-voyage-ai.md)
- [OpenAI embeddings vs ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/openai-embeddings-vs-zeroentropy.md)
- [Voyage AI embeddings and rerankers vs ZeroEntropy zerank and zembed](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/voyage-ai-vs-zeroentropy.md)