Migrating off text-embedding-3-small — retirement date and replacement
Source last checked: 2026-11-07.
Azure OpenAI is retiring text-embedding-3-small on 2028-02-09 — in 459 days. The provider has not named a replacement in its own documentation, so the migration target is your decision. This page is built from Azure OpenAI’s official deprecation notice and is rechecked weekly; the source link is below.
When is text-embedding-3-small being deprecated?
| Model | Provider | Retires | Replacement |
|---|---|---|---|
| text-embedding-3-small | Azure OpenAI | 2028-02-09 | — not named |
Source: Azure OpenAI deprecation notice
Test before switching
- Check the replacement's supported API endpoints and request parameters.
- Test your prompts, structured output, streaming and tool calls on staging.
- Compare quality, latency, pricing and rate limits on your workload.
- Keep a rollback path while the old model remains available.
Download retirement dates for your models.
What should I migrate text-embedding-3-small to?
Azure OpenAI has not published a successor for this model. Compare compatible alternatives using your workload, including output quality, latency, pricing and rate limits.
We do not currently probe the Azure OpenAI API host, so no measured latency is shown here. View measured providers
What else retires on 2028-02-09?
| Model | Provider | Retires | Replacement |
|---|---|---|---|
| text-embedding-3-large | Azure OpenAI | 2028-02-09 | — not named |
| text-embedding-ada-002 | Azure OpenAI | 2028-02-09 | — not named |
These models share a shutdown date. Plan each affected integration before that deadline.
Other Azure OpenAI models being retired
| Model | Provider | Retires | Replacement |
|---|---|---|---|
| codex-mini | Azure OpenAI | 2026-11-15 | — not named |
| gpt-4.1 | Azure OpenAI | 2027-04-14 | — not named |
| gpt-4.1-mini | Azure OpenAI | 2027-04-14 | — not named |
| gpt-4.1-nano | Azure OpenAI | 2027-04-14 | — not named |
| gpt-4o | Azure OpenAI | 2027-04-14 | gpt-5.1 |
| gpt-4o-mini | Azure OpenAI | 2027-04-14 | — not named |
| gpt-4o-mini-transcribe | Azure OpenAI | 2027-06-15 | — not named |
| gpt-4o-mini-tts | Azure OpenAI | 2027-06-15 | — not named |
How is this calendar maintained?
Entries are pulled from provider documentation by an automated weekly job and every one carries a link to its source. Nothing is inferred from blog posts or social media. When a provider changes a date, the change appears here after the next run and is visible in the changelog. The full calendar across all providers is on the deprecations page, and this provider’s own list is at Azure OpenAI deprecations.