Evaluators (Cross-Encoder)

All cross-encoder evaluators live in sentence_transformers.cross_encoder.evaluation.

Choosing the right evaluator

Wrap multiple in SequentialEvaluator (from sentence_transformers.base.evaluation) to track them together:

from sentence_transformers.base.evaluation import SequentialEvaluator
evaluator = SequentialEvaluator([nano_beir_eval, custom_rerank_eval])

The default: CrossEncoderNanoBEIREvaluator

Analog of NanoBEIREvaluator for rerankers. Takes BM25 top-100 for each NanoBEIR query and measures how well the cross-encoder re-ranks them.

from sentence_transformers.cross_encoder.evaluation import CrossEncoderNanoBEIREvaluator

evaluator = CrossEncoderNanoBEIREvaluator(
    dataset_names=["msmarco", "nfcorpus", "nq"],   # default: 11 of 13 NanoBEIR datasets (excludes "arguana", "touche2020")
    batch_size=64,
    rerank_k=100,                                   # rerank the BM25 top-K
)

Output key for metric_for_best_model: eval_NanoBEIR_R100_mean_ndcg@10. The R100 signals "rerank top-100"; if you change rerank_k, the prefix changes (e.g. R50).

Each individual dataset contributes eval_Nano{DatasetName}_R100_ndcg@10 (e.g. eval_NanoMSMARCO_R100_ndcg@10) too.

Custom reranking with your own candidates

Use when you have query + positive + distractor candidates that aren't part of NanoBEIR:

from sentence_transformers.cross_encoder.evaluation import CrossEncoderRerankingEvaluator

samples = [
    {"query": "...", "positive": ["the gold answer"], "documents": ["...", "...", ...]}
    for ...
]

evaluator = CrossEncoderRerankingEvaluator(
    samples=samples,
    batch_size=64,
    name="my-rerank",
    always_rerank_positives=False,   # default is True; override to False for realistic eval
)

• always_rerank_positives=True (the library default) forces the positive into the candidate pool even when the retriever missed it. The reranker is graded only on candidates it can actually score, so the metric reflects pure reranker quality.
• always_rerank_positives=False: the positive is only reranked if it's already in documents. If the retriever missed it, the rank counts as N+1. This reflects end-to-end retriever+reranker quality. A positive the retriever missed is lost, regardless of reranker skill.

Output key: eval_{name}_ndcg@10, eval_{name}_map, eval_{name}_mrr@10.

Classification-style cross-encoders

CrossEncoderClassificationEvaluator

Works for both binary (num_labels=1) and multi-class (num_labels>=2) cross-encoders. Branches internally:

• num_labels=1: binary mode. Sweeps thresholds to report accuracy, F1, precision, recall, and average_precision (primary).
• num_labels>=2: multi-class mode (e.g. NLI: entailment / neutral / contradiction). Reports f1_macro (primary), f1_micro, f1_weighted, and per-class precision / recall.

from sentence_transformers.cross_encoder.evaluation import CrossEncoderClassificationEvaluator

evaluator = CrossEncoderClassificationEvaluator(
    sentence_pairs=[(premise, hypothesis), ...],
    labels=[0, 1, 2, ...],
    batch_size=64,
    name="nli-dev",
)

Output keys (binary, num_labels=1): eval_{name}_accuracy, eval_{name}_f1, eval_{name}_average_precision (primary). Output keys (multi-class, num_labels>=2): eval_{name}_f1_macro (primary), eval_{name}_f1_micro, eval_{name}_f1_weighted.

CrossEncoderCorrelationEvaluator

For continuous-score cross-encoders (like an STS cross-encoder outputting a similarity score). Reports Pearson/Spearman vs. gold scores.

from sentence_transformers.cross_encoder.evaluation import CrossEncoderCorrelationEvaluator

evaluator = CrossEncoderCorrelationEvaluator(
    sentence_pairs=[(a, b), ...],
    scores=[0.4, 0.8, ...],
    name="stsb-dev",
)

Output keys: eval_{name}_spearman, eval_{name}_pearson.

Writing metric_for_best_model

Pattern: f"eval_{evaluator.primary_metric}". Inspect after construction: print(evaluator.primary_metric). Common values:

• eval_NanoBEIR_R100_mean_ndcg@10 — CrossEncoderNanoBEIREvaluator default
• eval_{name}_ndcg@10 — CrossEncoderRerankingEvaluator
• eval_{name}_average_precision — CrossEncoderClassificationEvaluator (binary, num_labels=1)
• eval_{name}_f1_macro — CrossEncoderClassificationEvaluator (multi-class, num_labels>=2)
• eval_{name}_spearman — CrossEncoderCorrelationEvaluator

Gotchas

• Always run evaluator(model) once before training — pre-training baseline. Tiny post-training delta means the loss/data/base is wrong.
• CrossEncoderClassificationEvaluator accepts both num_labels=1 (binary, primary average_precision) and num_labels>=2 (multi-class, primary f1_macro); CrossEncoderCorrelationEvaluator requires num_labels=1.
• The default dataset_names=None excludes arguana and touche2020 (Argument-Retrieval task differs from the rest); pass dataset_names=list(DATASET_NAME_TO_HUMAN_READABLE) from sentence_transformers.cross_encoder.evaluation.nano_beir to actually run all 13.
• Subset NanoBEIR datasets during training (3–4) to keep eval cheap; run the broader set post-training.