HuggingFace Rerank

HuggingFace Rerank allows you to use reranking models hosted on Hugging Face infrastructure or your custom endpoints to reorder documents based on their relevance to a query.

Property	Details
Description	HuggingFace Rerank enables semantic reranking of documents using models hosted on Hugging Face infrastructure or custom endpoints.
Provider Route on LiteLLM	huggingface/ in model name
Provider Doc	Hugging Face Hub ↗

Quick Start

LiteLLM Python SDK

Example using LiteLLM Python SDK

import litellm
import os

# Set your HuggingFace token
os.environ["HF_TOKEN"] = "hf_xxxxxx"

# Basic rerank usage
response = litellm.rerank(
    model="huggingface/BAAI/bge-reranker-base",
    query="What is the capital of the United States?",
    documents=[
        "Carson City is the capital city of the American state of Nevada.",
        "The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean. Its capital is Saipan.",
        "Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States.",
        "Capital punishment has existed in the United States since before it was a country.",
    ],
    top_n=3,
)

print(response)

Custom Endpoint Usage

Using custom HuggingFace endpoint

import litellm

response = litellm.rerank(
    model="huggingface/BAAI/bge-reranker-base",
    query="hello",
    documents=["hello", "world"],
    top_n=2,
    api_base="https://my-custom-hf-endpoint.com",
    api_key="test_api_key",
)

print(response)

Async Usage

Async rerank example

import litellm
import asyncio
import os

os.environ["HF_TOKEN"] = "hf_xxxxxx"

async def async_rerank_example():
    response = await litellm.arerank(
        model="huggingface/BAAI/bge-reranker-base",
        query="What is the capital of the United States?",
        documents=[
            "Carson City is the capital city of the American state of Nevada.",
            "The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean. Its capital is Saipan.",
            "Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States.",
            "Capital punishment has existed in the United States since before it was a country.",
        ],
        top_n=3,
    )
    print(response)

asyncio.run(async_rerank_example())

LiteLLM Proxy

1. Configure your model in config.yaml

config.yaml

model_list:
  - model_name: bge-reranker-base
    litellm_params:
      model: huggingface/BAAI/bge-reranker-base
      api_key: os.environ/HF_TOKEN
  - model_name: bge-reranker-large  
    litellm_params:
      model: huggingface/BAAI/bge-reranker-large
      api_key: os.environ/HF_TOKEN
  - model_name: custom-reranker
    litellm_params:
      model: huggingface/BAAI/bge-reranker-base
      api_base: https://my-custom-hf-endpoint.com
      api_key: your-custom-api-key

2. Start the proxy

export HF_TOKEN="hf_xxxxxx"
litellm --config /path/to/config.yaml

# RUNNING on http://0.0.0.0:4000

3. Make rerank requests

Curl

curl http://localhost:4000/rerank \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LITELLM_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "model": "bge-reranker-base",
    "query": "What is the capital of the United States?",
    "documents": [
        "Carson City is the capital city of the American state of Nevada.",
        "The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean. Its capital is Saipan.",
        "Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States.",
        "Capital punishment has existed in the United States since before it was a country."
    ],
    "top_n": 3
  }'

Python SDK

import litellm

# Initialize with your LiteLLM proxy URL
response = litellm.rerank(
    model="bge-reranker-base",
    query="What is the capital of the United States?",
    documents=[
        "Carson City is the capital city of the American state of Nevada.",
        "The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean. Its capital is Saipan.",
        "Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States.",
        "Capital punishment has existed in the United States since before it was a country.",
    ],
    top_n=3,
    api_base="http://localhost:4000",
    api_key="your-litellm-api-key"
)

print(response)

Using requests library

import requests

url = "http://localhost:4000/rerank"
headers = {
    "Authorization": "Bearer your-litellm-api-key",
    "Content-Type": "application/json"
}

data = {
    "model": "bge-reranker-base",
    "query": "What is the capital of the United States?",
    "documents": [
        "Carson City is the capital city of the American state of Nevada.",
        "The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean. Its capital is Saipan.",
        "Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States.",
        "Capital punishment has existed in the United States since before it was a country."
    ],
    "top_n": 3
}

response = requests.post(url, headers=headers, json=data)
print(response.json())

Configuration Options

Authentication

Using HuggingFace Token (Serverless)

import os
os.environ["HF_TOKEN"] = "hf_xxxxxx"

# Or pass directly
litellm.rerank(
    model="huggingface/BAAI/bge-reranker-base",
    api_key="hf_xxxxxx",
    # ... other params
)

Using Custom Endpoint

litellm.rerank(
    model="huggingface/BAAI/bge-reranker-base",
    api_base="https://your-custom-endpoint.com",
    api_key="your-custom-key",
    # ... other params
)

Response Format

The response follows the standard rerank API format:

{
  "results": [
    {
      "index": 3,
      "relevance_score": 0.999071
    },
    {
      "index": 4,
      "relevance_score": 0.7867867
    },
    {
      "index": 0,
      "relevance_score": 0.32713068
    }
  ],
  "id": "07734bd2-2473-4f07-94e1-0d9f0e6843cf",
  "meta": {
    "api_version": {
      "version": "2",
      "is_experimental": false
    },
    "billed_units": {
      "search_units": 1
    }
  }
}