NVIDIA RAG Metrics via Ragas

NVIDIA’s RAG evaluation metrics ship inside Ragas as a dedicated collection: AnswerAccuracy (does the response match a reference), ContextRelevance (does the retrieved context cover the question), and ResponseGroundedness (is the response actually supported by the context). They’re tuned to match NVIDIA’s published RAG quality benchmarks while reusing Ragas’s prompting and execution machinery. This guide shows both ways to wire them into Arize AX: Flow 1 grades existing Arize AX traces with ResponseGroundedness and writes the scores back via client.spans.update_evaluations(...); Flow 2 uploads a small dataset, runs an Arize AX experiment with the same evaluator wrapped as an experiment evaluator, and surfaces the scores in Datasets+Experiments. For the sibling Ragas integration (the standard metrics like Faithfulness and AnswerRelevancy), see the Ragas evaluation guide. Both flows share the same setup. Run the code blocks below in order inside a single Python session — each block builds on imports and variables from earlier ones.

Prerequisites

Python 3.11+
An ARIZE_SPACE_ID and ARIZE_API_KEY from your Arize AX space settings
An OPENAI_API_KEY from OpenAI Platform (used as both the model under trace and the judge model for NVIDIA’s metrics)

Launch Arize AX

If you don’t already have an Arize AX account, sign up at arize.com and grab your ARIZE_SPACE_ID and ARIZE_API_KEY from Settings → Space Settings.

Install

pip install ragas 'arize>=8.0.0' openai openinference-instrumentation-openai opentelemetry-sdk opentelemetry-exporter-otlp-proto-grpc pandas

Configure credentials

export ARIZE_SPACE_ID="<your-space-id>"
export ARIZE_API_KEY="<your-api-key>"
export OPENAI_API_KEY="<your-openai-api-key>"

Define evaluators

The shared setup: NVIDIA’s v2 ResponseGroundedness metric (from ragas.metrics.collections) backed by gpt-5-mini via Ragas’s llm_factory, the canonical 2-row hallucination dataset both flows score, and an Arize SDK client. temperature=1.0 is passed explicitly because gpt-5 only supports the default temperature.

# combined.py
import os
import time
from datetime import datetime, timedelta, timezone

import pandas as pd
from arize import ArizeClient
from openai import AsyncOpenAI, OpenAI
from ragas.llms import llm_factory
from ragas.metrics.collections import ResponseGroundedness

SPACE_ID = os.environ["ARIZE_SPACE_ID"]
API_KEY = os.environ["ARIZE_API_KEY"]
TIMESTAMP = int(time.time())

# NVIDIA ResponseGroundedness scores 0.0–1.0 — 1.0 means the response is
# fully supported by the retrieved context, 0.0 means it's not. The v2
# metric uses Ragas's modern `llm_factory` API and a dual-judge prompt
# pair under the hood; it accepts an `InstructorBaseRagasLLM`.
ragas_llm = llm_factory(
    "gpt-5-mini",
    client=AsyncOpenAI(),
    temperature=1.0,  # gpt-5 only supports the default temperature
)
response_groundedness = ResponseGroundedness(llm=ragas_llm)

# Canonical 2-row dataset — row 0 is factual (answer matches the reference),
# row 1 is hallucinated. Both flows grade these same rows.
ROWS = [
    {
        "input":     "What is the capital of France?",
        "output":    "Paris is the capital of France.",
        "reference": "Paris is the capital and most populous city of France.",
    },
    {
        "input":     "What is the capital of France?",
        "output":    "Berlin is the capital of France.",
        "reference": "Paris is the capital and most populous city of France.",
    },
]

arize = ArizeClient(api_key=API_KEY)

Flow 1 — Evaluate existing traces

Source the spans

Instrument OpenAI with OpenInference, make two calls (each forced to echo a known answer so the trace contains predictable text), then pull the resulting spans back from Arize AX.

from openinference.instrumentation.openai import OpenAIInstrumentor
from opentelemetry import trace
from opentelemetry.exporter.otlp.proto.grpc.trace_exporter import OTLPSpanExporter
from opentelemetry.sdk.resources import Resource
from opentelemetry.sdk.trace import TracerProvider
from opentelemetry.sdk.trace.export import BatchSpanProcessor

PROJECT_NAME = f"nv-ragas-tracing-example-{TIMESTAMP}"

resource = Resource.create(
    {
        "service.name":                PROJECT_NAME,
        "openinference.project.name":  PROJECT_NAME,
        "model_id":                    PROJECT_NAME,
    }
)
provider = TracerProvider(resource=resource)
provider.add_span_processor(
    BatchSpanProcessor(
        OTLPSpanExporter(
            endpoint="https://otlp.arize.com:443",
            headers={
                "authorization":   API_KEY,
                "arize-space-id":  SPACE_ID,
                "arize-interface": "python",
            },
        )
    )
)
trace.set_tracer_provider(provider)
OpenAIInstrumentor().instrument(tracer_provider=provider)

sync_oai = OpenAI()
for row in ROWS:
    sync_oai.chat.completions.create(
        model="gpt-5-mini",
        messages=[
            {
                "role": "system",
                "content": (
                    "You are a fact-recall assistant. The user states the "
                    "exact answer to use; reply with that verbatim."
                ),
            },
            {
                "role": "user",
                "content": (
                    f"Question: {row['input']}\n"
                    f"Answer (reply verbatim): {row['output']}"
                ),
            },
        ],
    )

provider.force_flush(timeout_millis=10_000)
print(f"Project: {PROJECT_NAME}")

# Poll defensively: Arize's OTLP ingest and Flight export use different
# catalogs and the new project can briefly appear "unauthorized" to the
# export endpoint while still accepting span writes via OTLP, so swallow
# transient errors and retry.
start = datetime.now(timezone.utc) - timedelta(minutes=5)
end = datetime.now(timezone.utc) + timedelta(minutes=1)
spans_df = None
last_err: Exception | None = None
for _ in range(12):
    time.sleep(5)
    try:
        spans_df = arize.spans.export_to_df(
            space_id=SPACE_ID,
            project_name=PROJECT_NAME,
            start_time=start,
            end_time=end,
        )
    except Exception as e:
        last_err = e
        continue
    if spans_df is not None and len(spans_df) >= len(ROWS):
        break
else:
    raise RuntimeError(
        f"Spans never appeared after 60s (last error: {last_err})"
    )

spans_df = spans_df.sort_values("start_time").reset_index(drop=True)

Run the evaluators

The v2 metric exposes ascore(response=..., retrieved_contexts=[...]) directly — no SingleTurnSample wrapper. It’s async, so wrap each call in asyncio.run(...) from sync code. Flow 2 below uses the same metric from inside an async def evaluator wrapper.

import asyncio

scores = []
labels = []
for i, row in spans_df.iterrows():
    result = asyncio.run(
        response_groundedness.ascore(
            response=row["output"],
            retrieved_contexts=[ROWS[i]["reference"]],
        )
    )
    score = float(result.value)
    scores.append(score)
    labels.append("grounded" if score >= 0.5 else "ungrounded")

Log evaluations to Arize AX

eval_df = pd.DataFrame(
    {
        "context.span_id":                  spans_df["context.span_id"],
        "eval.nv_response_groundedness.score": scores,
        "eval.nv_response_groundedness.label": labels,
    }
)
arize.spans.update_evaluations(
    space_id=SPACE_ID,
    project_name=PROJECT_NAME,
    dataframe=eval_df,
)

flow1_display = pd.DataFrame(
    {
        "input":  [r["input"]  for r in ROWS],
        "output": [r["output"] for r in ROWS],
        "score":  scores,
    }
)
print("Flow 1 results:")
print(flow1_display.to_string())

Expected output

Flow 1 results:
                            input                            output  score
0  What is the capital of France?   Paris is the capital of France.    1.0
1  What is the capital of France?  Berlin is the capital of France.    0.0

Verify in Arize AX

Open the project named nv-ragas-tracing-example-<timestamp> (the value printed above) in your Arize AX space. Each ChatCompletion span now carries an nv_response_groundedness annotation column showing the 0/1 score and the grounded / ungrounded label.

Flow 2 — Run an experiment

Create a dataset

DATASET_NAME = f"nv-ragas-experiment-example-ds-{TIMESTAMP}"
dataset_df = pd.DataFrame(ROWS)
arize.datasets.create(
    name=DATASET_NAME,
    space=SPACE_ID,
    examples=dataset_df,
)
print(f"Dataset: {DATASET_NAME}")

Define the task

def task(dataset_row):
    return dataset_row["output"]

Wrap the evaluators

Experiment evaluators run inside an asyncio loop, so the wrapper is async def and awaits response_groundedness.ascore(...) directly. Return an EvaluationResult with score, label, and explanation populated — leaving any of those as None triggers unsupported cast from null to <type>: reserved column cannot be coerced to canonical type at upload time.

from arize.experiments.evaluators.types import EvaluationResult


async def nv_response_groundedness_eval(
    input, output, dataset_row
) -> EvaluationResult:
    result = await response_groundedness.ascore(
        response=output if isinstance(output, str) else str(output),
        retrieved_contexts=[dataset_row["reference"]],
    )
    score = float(result.value)
    return EvaluationResult(
        score=score,
        label="grounded" if score >= 0.5 else "ungrounded",
        explanation="NVIDIA ResponseGroundedness (Ragas)",
    )

Run the experiment

EXPERIMENT_NAME = f"nv-ragas-experiment-example-{TIMESTAMP}"
experiment, runs_df = arize.experiments.run(
    space=SPACE_ID,
    name=EXPERIMENT_NAME,
    dataset=DATASET_NAME,
    task=task,
    evaluators={"nv_response_groundedness": nv_response_groundedness_eval},
)
print(f"Experiment: {EXPERIMENT_NAME}")
print("Flow 2 results:")
flow2_display = runs_df[
    [
        "output",
        "eval.nv_response_groundedness.score",
        "eval.nv_response_groundedness.label",
    ]
].rename(
    columns={
        "eval.nv_response_groundedness.score": "score",
        "eval.nv_response_groundedness.label": "label",
    }
)
print(flow2_display.to_string())

Expected output

Flow 2 results:
                             output  score       label
0   Paris is the capital of France.    1.0    grounded
1  Berlin is the capital of France.    0.0  ungrounded

Verify in Arize AX

Open the Datasets + Experiments tab in Arize AX. The dataset nv-ragas-experiment-example-ds-<timestamp> and the experiment nv-ragas-experiment-example-<timestamp> (names printed above) appear with one run per dataset row, each carrying the nv_response_groundedness score and label columns.

Troubleshooting

Skipping a sample by assigning it nan score. The judge call failed (rate limit, model error, etc.) and Ragas swallowed the exception. Check the warning lines just above this message in stderr for the actual error.
column "eval.nv_response_groundedness.label": unsupported cast from null to string: reserved column cannot be coerced to canonical type. Your experiment evaluator returned a bare float instead of a fully-populated EvaluationResult(score=..., label=..., explanation=...). Arize AX’s Flight server rejects null reserved columns.
Spans never appear after 60s. Span flush + ingest typically takes 5–15s. If the loop times out, check that ARIZE_SPACE_ID + ARIZE_API_KEY are right and that you’re connecting to the correct region’s OTLP endpoint (otlp.arize.com for US, otlp.eu.arize.com for EU).
Using AnswerAccuracy or ContextRelevance instead. Swap ResponseGroundedness for AnswerAccuracy (requires reference field on the sample) or ContextRelevance (requires user_input + retrieved_contexts). The wiring is otherwise identical. See Ragas NVIDIA metrics docs for the per-metric required fields.
Using the official NVIDIA RAG-Eval suite directly (not via Ragas). The standalone nvidia-rag-eval package exists but is paywalled behind NVIDIA AI Enterprise. The Ragas wrappers used here are the open, community-supported path to the same metric definitions.
Experiment re-runs collide. Both names embed TIMESTAMP = int(time.time()) so a single re-run produces unique names. If you re-execute the same combined.py quickly, regenerate TIMESTAMP first or call arize.experiments.delete(...) / arize.datasets.delete(...) on the prior run’s names.

NVIDIA RAG Metrics via Ragas

Prerequisites

Launch Arize AX

Install

Configure credentials

Define evaluators

Flow 1 — Evaluate existing traces

Source the spans

Run the evaluators

Log evaluations to Arize AX

Expected output

Verify in Arize AX

Flow 2 — Run an experiment

Create a dataset

Define the task

Wrap the evaluators

Run the experiment

Expected output

Verify in Arize AX

Troubleshooting

Resources

Ragas NVIDIA Metrics Documentation

Ragas on GitHub

Ragas (standard metrics) in Arize AX

Logging evaluations to Arize AX

​Prerequisites

​Launch Arize AX

​Install

​Configure credentials

​Define evaluators

​Flow 1 — Evaluate existing traces

​Source the spans

​Run the evaluators

​Log evaluations to Arize AX

​Expected output

​Verify in Arize AX

​Flow 2 — Run an experiment

​Create a dataset

​Define the task

​Wrap the evaluators

​Run the experiment

​Expected output

​Verify in Arize AX

​Troubleshooting

​Resources

Ragas NVIDIA Metrics Documentation

Ragas on GitHub

Ragas (standard metrics) in Arize AX

Logging evaluations to Arize AX

Prerequisites

Launch Arize AX

Install

Configure credentials

Define evaluators

Flow 1 — Evaluate existing traces

Source the spans

Run the evaluators

Log evaluations to Arize AX

Expected output

Verify in Arize AX

Flow 2 — Run an experiment

Create a dataset

Define the task

Wrap the evaluators

Run the experiment

Expected output

Verify in Arize AX

Troubleshooting

Resources