Baidu smallest language model engineered for minimal memory consumption, high streaming throughput, and high-volume background jobs.
Technical Specifications
- Provider
- Baidu
- Category
- lightweight
- Release Date
- 2024-03
- Batch API Discount
- Standard rate
- Consumer Subscription
- Free / Self-Hosted
- Reasoning Effort Control
- Fixed
- Structured Outputs
- Yes
- Output Modalities
- text
- Official Documentation
- Visit Official Docs ↗
Data Privacy, Licensing & Deployment Governance
Official Provider Release Intelligence, API Quotas & Agentic Specs
- Official API Model ID (SDK String)
- ernie-lite
- Supported SDK & API Protocol
- OpenAI-Compatible REST / vLLM / SGLang / HuggingFace TGI
- Lifecycle & Deprecation Status
- Legacy Stable (Upgrade path available in Baidu lineup)
- Production Rate Limits (RPM & TPM)
- Unlimited (Hardware-bound on self-hosted GPU) / 10,000 RPM Cloud · Unlimited local throughput / 10M+ TPM Managed Cloud
- Long-Context Pricing Tier (>128K / >200K)
- Free across full context window (only KV-cache VRAM scales)
- Prompt Cache Write & TTL Policy
- Automatic prefix KV-caching in vLLM / SGLang (0 cost)
- Computer Use & Browser GUI Agent
- API / CLI Tool-Use & DOM Agent ready (no raw pixel desktop click loop)
- MCP & Parallel Tool Calling
- Native MCP Client/Server ready · Parallel function calling · 100% Strict JSON Schema
- Web Search Grounding & Code Sandbox
- Supported via external Tavily/Exa Search & E2B/Docker Sandbox tools
- Fine-Tuning & Distillation Support
- Full Weights SFT, LoRA, QLoRA, DPO & GRPO RL (Unsloth / Axolotl / Llama-Factory)
- Multimodal Tokenization Billing
- Text BPE (~4 chars/token)
- Weights Precision & Quantization
- BF16 / FP16, FP8 Dynamic, INT4 AWQ / GPTQ, GGUF (Q4_K_M / Q8_0)
- Minimum GPU VRAM Requirement
- 2 GB VRAM (4-bit Quantized) · 6 GB VRAM (Native BF16)
- Supported Inference Engines
- vLLM, SGLang, Ollama, llama.cpp, TensorRT-LLM, HuggingFace TGI
- System Card & Safety Framework
- Open-Weights System Card + Customizable Guardrail Layer (Llama Guard / ShieldGemma)
- Enterprise Compliance (SOC2 / HIPAA / ZDR)
- 100% Air-Gapped On-Premises / Private VPC · Full HIPAA, GDPR & SOC2 Control
ERNIE Lite Cost, Context, Hardware & API Integration
Open-weights or free-tier model: $0 API license cost when self-hosted.
Same Monthly Workload Cost Across Popular Reference Models
Live Prompt Paste Tokenizer & Cost Counter
Paste real system instructions, JSON schemas, or code to measure BPE token counts across tokenizers.
Hybrid Prompt Routing Cascade Simulator
Route routine queries to a fast lightweight model ($0.15/1M) and escalate only complex reasoning turns to ERNIE Lite:
Benchmark Scores & 6-Axis Capability Radar
- MMLU-Pro
- 61%
- HumanEval
- 68%
- Chatbot Arena Elo
- 1180pts
Strengths
- Completely free tier access on Baidu Qianfan platform
- Blazing fast generation exceeding 190 tokens per second
- Minimal resource footprint suitable for embedded edge devices
Limitations & Trade-offs
- Low accuracy on subtle linguistic nuances or complex multi-step reasoning
- High rate of hallucination when pushed beyond straightforward facts
Editorial Assessment
An ultra-fast, zero-cost lightweight engine for mass-scale rudimentary tasks.
Best for: High-frequency keyword tagging, basic intent routing, and embedded device NLP
Compare ERNIE Lite
Frequently Asked Questions about ERNIE Lite
How much does the ERNIE Lite API cost per 1M tokens?+
ERNIE Lite by Baidu is priced at $0 per 1M input tokens and $0 per 1M output tokens. With prompt caching enabled, cached input tokens cost $0 per 1M tokens, and asynchronous Batch API requests receive a 0% discount.
Should I use a $20/month subscription or the ERNIE Lite pay-as-you-go API?+
A flat $20/month consumer subscription is predictable for daily interactive chat and manual coding. However, if you are building software, running automated workflows, or sending low-to-moderate volume with prompt caching enabled, the pay-as-you-go API is typically far more cost-effective and offers higher rate limits without manual UI caps.
How many words and pages fit in ERNIE Lite's context window?+
ERNIE Lite features a 128K tokens context window, which equals approximately 96,000 English words or ~256 standard single-spaced pages in a single prompt. Its maximum output generation per turn is 4,096 tokens.
Can I run ERNIE Lite locally on my own GPU (Open Weights)?+
Yes, ERNIE Lite (Confidential / 3B Scale) releases open weights that can be self-hosted locally or on private cloud GPUs using vLLM, Ollama, SGLang, or llama.cpp.
Does Baidu train on data sent to the ERNIE Lite API, and is commercial use allowed?+
100% Isolated when self-hosted on private GPUs or VPC. License tier: Open-Weights Research & Commercial License. Full commercial ownership of generated outputs. Supported deployment channels include: Self-Hosted GPU (vLLM / Ollama), Private VPC, or Managed Serverless API.
How does ERNIE Lite perform on coding and reasoning benchmarks?+
ERNIE Lite achieves a composite Intelligence Index of 65/100, scoring N/A% on SWE-bench Verified, N/A% on GPQA Diamond, 61% on MMLU-Pro, and 1180 pts on Chatbot Arena Elo.
What is ERNIE Lite best used for?+
ERNIE Lite is best suited for: High-frequency keyword tagging, basic intent routing, and embedded device NLP. Assessment: An ultra-fast, zero-cost lightweight engine for mass-scale rudimentary tasks.
Baidu Family Lineage, Routing Tiers & Upgrade Path
Step down to a lighter sibling for high-volume routing or step up to Baidu's flagship reasoning tier:
AI Glossary & Architecture Concepts
View full glossary →Key machine learning concepts and benchmarks relevant to ERNIE Lite:
The basic unit of text that a language model processes, typically representing about 3 to 4 English characters or roughly 0.75 words. For example, the sentence "Artificial intelligence is fast" breaks down into about 5 tokens.
A standardized evaluation suite used to objectively measure and rank an AI model's capabilities across specific tasks — such as SWE-bench Verified for software engineering, AIME for competitive math, or MMLU for general knowledge.
The maximum number of tokens a model can consider at once — both the input it reads and the output it writes. A 1,000,000-token context window can hold roughly 750,000 English words in a single request.
The ability of a language model to recognize when an external capability is needed and output structured JSON arguments to invoke external APIs, databases, or terminal commands. The runtime executes the tool and passes results back to the model.
An open standard created by Anthropic that allows AI applications and agents to connect seamlessly to local filesystems, development environments, and third-party APIs via standardized server interfaces.
The neural network architecture introduced in 2017 that powers modern LLMs, using self-attention mechanisms to process all tokens in a sequence concurrently rather than sequentially.
Benchmark scores, token prices, and rate limits evolve rapidly as AI labs release model updates. Always verify current specifications and pricing on the official provider documentation.
Sources: Baidu Qianfan API Pricing↗