LLM Reference

BERT Models by Google DeepMind

Google DeepMindUnknown / Unverified
This model family is considered obsolete. Consider newer alternatives in Related Model Families below.
2 models2018Up to 512 ctx

Last refreshed 2026-05-19. Next refresh: weekly.

Details

ResearcherGoogle DeepMind
LicenseUnknown / Unverified
Commercial useCommercial use: unknown
Models2
Released2018
Max context512

About

BERT, short for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, is a prominent family of large language models (LLMs) originally introduced by Google AI in 2018 1)3. These models utilize the transformer architecture to process text in a unique bidirectional manner, enabling an understanding of context by considering both preceding and following words within a sentence 8. Techniques such as masked language modeling (MLM) and next sentence prediction (NSP) contribute to BERT's superior performance on various natural language processing (NLP) tasks compared to older models 10. Initially, BERT was released in two configurations, BERTBASE with 110 million parameters and BERTLARGE with 340 million parameters, both trained on extensive datasets like the BookCorpus and English Wikipedia 3. The BERT family has since expanded to include multilingual versions and smaller models like DistilBERT and TinyBERT, catering to specific tasks and resource constraints 4. This adaptability has made BERT integral to applications like question answering, text classification, and named entity recognition 2.

Decision facts

Best fit
coding
Capability starting point
BERT Large with 512 context
Lowest tracked input
Not tracked
Closest related family
T5Gemma

Current Variants

Use-when guidance is based on each model's tracked capabilities, context window, release date, and replacement status.

2 in view
BERT LargeCurrent

Use when the workload needs 512 context and 340M parameters.

2018-10512 context340M parameters
BERT BaseCurrent

Use when the workload needs 512 context and 110M parameters.

2018-10512 context110M parameters

Release Timeline

1 release group
2018-10
2 current
BERT Base
512 context110M parameters
Current
BERT Large
512 context340M parameters
Current

Specifications(2 models)

BERT model specifications comparison
ModelReleasedContextParameters
BERT Large2018-10512340M
BERT Base2018-10512110M