Open Sourcing text-embedding-3-small after deprecation

API Deprecations
1

Given that the embeddings model “text-embedding-3-small” will be deprecated, would it be possible to open source it?

Many developers have built systems on top of these embeddings. Switching to a different model would require re-embedding the entire history.

It would be a very positive sign and make it easier to keep building systems on top of OpenAI embeddings. If not, I believe it sets a dangerous precedent and developers are motivated to only build on top of open-source embeddings to not risk their systems breaking down when OpenAI decides to deprecate a certain embedding model.

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2

Maybe it’s not being deprecated after all? It was listed in the deprecation email and in the following table, but it’s no longer there:

developers dot openai dot com/api/docs/deprecations#2026-04-22-legacy-gpt-model-snapshots

3

I got the same deprecation email and see that it has since been removed from the list. Is there a way to know for sure if this is going away? It is embedded in our product flows and disruptions here are meaningful.

4

I’m having the same issue, and this model is critical for my project. Tag me if there’s any progress! Thanks!

5

We’re writing to correct our previous email about upcoming model shutdowns in 2026.

That email incorrectly said that text-embedding-3-small would be deprecated later this year. That was a mistake: text-embedding-3-small is not being deprecated, and we’ve updated our deprecation guide to reflect that.

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Were this model deprecated, which seems not to be the case now, there’s a dozen open-source models that outperform even 3-large in retrieval and rerank benchmarks, even at smaller native dimensions.