There is no per-unit API price: API price not public.
There is no free API. The weights are open, so you can run it yourself.
#113 of 200 in Embeddings.
On MTEB Dutch v1 · Pair Classification · Dutch, Multilingual E5 Base scores 76.7 vs 76.8 — about the same.
Released 2024-02-08. It is the current version in its line.
Yes, the weights are open (MIT licence).
The weights are open and can be self-hosted; hardware needs are not confirmed yet.
Multilingual E5 Base is an open-weights embeddings & retrieval model from intfloat, released Feb 2024.
Qwen 3 Embedding 8B (better), Llama Embed Nemotron 8B (open weights).