diff --git a/rustbpe/src/lib.rs b/rustbpe/src/lib.rs
index 273d7f2..f9c8494 100644
--- a/rustbpe/src/lib.rs
+++ b/rustbpe/src/lib.rs
@@ -465,6 +465,22 @@ impl Tokenizer {
 
         all_ids
     }
+
+    /// Encode multiple texts in parallel using rayon.
+    /// Returns a list of token ID vectors, one per input text.
+    #[pyo3(signature = (texts))]
+    #[pyo3(text_signature = "(self, texts)")]
+    pub fn batch_encode(&self, py: Python<'_>, texts: Vec<String>) -> PyResult<Vec<Vec<u32>>> {
+        // Release Python GIL and encode in parallel using rayon
+        let results = py.allow_threads(|| {
+            texts
+                .par_iter()
+                .map(|text| self.encode(text))
+                .collect::<Vec<Vec<u32>>>()
+        });
+
+        Ok(results)
+    }
 }
 
 #[pymodule]
diff --git a/tests/test_rustbpe.py b/tests/test_rustbpe.py
index aca67fc..482ea20 100644
--- a/tests/test_rustbpe.py
+++ b/tests/test_rustbpe.py
@@ -633,3 +633,84 @@ def test_interface(enwik8_small):
         ids_reloaded = tok_reloaded.encode(encode_text)
         assert ids_reloaded == ids, "Reloaded tokenizer should produce same results"
         print("✅ Save/load through temporary directory OK")
+
+
+def test_batch_encode_correctness(enwik8_small):
+    """Quick correctness test for batch_encode()"""
+    text = enwik8_small
+    vocab_size = 512
+
+    tokenizer = rustbpe.Tokenizer()
+    tokenizer.train_from_iterator([text], vocab_size)
+
+    # Test with various batch sizes and edge cases
+    test_texts = [
+        "Hello world",
+        "The quick brown fox",
+        "jumps over the lazy dog",
+        "",  # empty string
+        "a",  # single char
+    ]
+
+    # Compare batch vs individual encoding
+    individual = [tokenizer.encode(t) for t in test_texts]
+    batched = tokenizer.batch_encode(test_texts)
+
+    assert individual == batched, "Batch encoding should match individual encoding"
+    print("✅ batch_encode() correctness verified")
+
+
+@pytest.mark.slow
+def test_batch_encode_performance(enwik8_large):
+    """
+    Benchmark batch_encode() vs sequential encode() loop.
+    Demonstrates parallelization speedup.
+    """
+    # Setup
+    text = enwik8_large  # 10MB dataset
+    vocab_size = 2048
+
+    # Train tokenizer
+    print("\nTraining tokenizer...")
+    tokenizer = rustbpe.Tokenizer()
+    tokenizer.train_from_iterator([text], vocab_size)
+
+    # Create test batch: split text into chunks
+    chunk_size = 50_000  # ~50KB per chunk
+    chunks = [text[i:i+chunk_size] for i in range(0, len(text), chunk_size)]
+    chunks = chunks[:20]  # Use first 20 chunks (~1MB total)
+
+    print(f"\nBatch encoding benchmark:")
+    print(f"  Number of texts: {len(chunks)}")
+    print(f"  Avg text length: {sum(len(c) for c in chunks) / len(chunks):.0f} chars")
+
+    # Benchmark 1: Sequential encoding (baseline)
+    print("\n  [1/3] Sequential encode() loop...")
+    sequential_results, sequential_time = time_function(
+        lambda: [tokenizer.encode(chunk) for chunk in chunks]
+    )
+    print(f"    Time: {sequential_time:.4f}s")
+
+    # Benchmark 2: Parallel batch_encode()
+    print("  [2/3] Parallel batch_encode()...")
+    batch_results, batch_time = time_function(
+        tokenizer.batch_encode, chunks
+    )
+    print(f"    Time: {batch_time:.4f}s")
+
+    # Verify correctness
+    print("  [3/3] Verifying correctness...")
+    assert len(batch_results) == len(sequential_results), "Result count mismatch"
+    for i, (seq, batch) in enumerate(zip(sequential_results, batch_results)):
+        assert seq == batch, f"Mismatch at index {i}"
+    print("    ✓ All results match")
+
+    # Report speedup
+    speedup = sequential_time / batch_time
+    print(f"\n  Performance Results:")
+    print(f"    Sequential: {sequential_time:.4f}s")
+    print(f"    Batch:      {batch_time:.4f}s")
+    print(f"    Speedup:    {speedup:.2f}x")
+
+    # Assert meaningful speedup (at least 1.5x on multi-core)
+    assert speedup > 1.5, f"Expected >1.5x speedup, got {speedup:.2f}x"