diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 77d957226..0d70bf230 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -90,6 +90,13 @@ Install the sdk via pip:
 pip install mem0ai
 ```
 
+For enhanced hybrid search with BM25 keyword matching and entity extraction, install with NLP support:
+
+```bash
+pip install mem0ai[nlp]
+python -m spacy download en_core_web_sm
+```
+
 Install sdk via npm:
 ```bash
 npm install mem0ai
diff --git a/mem0/utils/spacy_models.py b/mem0/utils/spacy_models.py
index f5dfb263b..588211070 100644
--- a/mem0/utils/spacy_models.py
+++ b/mem0/utils/spacy_models.py
@@ -19,8 +19,13 @@ _lock = threading.Lock()
 
 
 def _ensure_model_available():
-    """Download en_core_web_sm if not already installed. Does not load the model."""
-    import spacy
+    """Download en_core_web_sm if spaCy is installed but model is missing."""
+    try:
+        import spacy
+    except ImportError:
+        raise ImportError(
+            "spaCy is not installed. Install it with: pip install mem0ai[nlp]"
+        )
 
     if not spacy.util.is_package("en_core_web_sm"):
         logger.info("Downloading spaCy model en_core_web_sm...")
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 25e28c43f..a7ec8b440 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -21,10 +21,12 @@ dependencies = [
     "pytz>=2024.1",
     "sqlalchemy>=2.0.31",
     "protobuf>=5.29.0,<6.0.0",
-    "spacy>=3.7.0",
 ]
 
 [project.optional-dependencies]
+nlp = [
+    "spacy>=3.7.0",
+]
 graph = [
     "langchain-neo4j>=0.4.0",
     "langchain-aws>=0.2.23",