JEV vs local cross-encoder as RAG reranker: same accuracy, worse economics

ExamImmediate8956 · reddit · 2026-09-28

Testing TypeSafe JEV as a RAG reranker on the 144-page EU AI Act (937 chunks, 18 answerable + 3 unanswerable questions), all three setups hit 17/18 accuracy: no reranker (10,278 tokens, 8s), local cross-encoder (626 tokens, 3.2s, free), JEV (476 tokens, 3.9s, $0.0018/query). JEV returned empty candidate sets on unanswerable questions, saving only $0.000074/query — far less than its own cost. The takeaway: benchmark baselines matter; JEV looks great against "send everything to the LLM" but loses to a free local reranker.

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