Mac M1 16G — what LLMs can it run?
47 of 87 indexed models fit comfortably in 16GB at 4K context, each at the highest-quality quant that still leaves headroom.
The short answer for Mac M1 16G
16 GB, 68 GB/s (Derived from Apple's statements that the M2 (100 GB/s) is 50% faster and the M1 Max (400 GB/s) nearly 6× faster; Apple does not list the M1 figure directly.). 47 of 87 models in this index fit comfortably at 4K context; 48 load at all.
- Biggest that fits
- DeepSeek-Coder-V2-Lite Instruct — 10.1 GB at Q4_K_M — 1.9 GB spare at 4K, so longer context comes out of a thin margin.
- Room to grow
- Qwen2-VL 7B Instruct — 5.5 GB at Q4_K_M — under 60% of the card, which leaves 6.5 GB for a long context window or a second process.
- Speed ceiling
- Llama 3.1 8B Instruct at Q4_K_M reads 4.6 GB of weights per token, so 68 GB/s puts a hard ceiling near 15 tok/s. That is arithmetic on two published numbers, not a benchmark — real throughput lands below it. No run on this card has been measured here, so there is nothing to compare the ceiling against.
- The wall you will hit
- The GPU's share of unified memory, not the 16 GB on the box. macOS reserves part of the pool for the system and caps what a single process may wire down, so the practical budget is meaningfully below nameplate — the limit is adjustable (`iogpu.wired_limit_mb`) but it is not absent. Bandwidth is 68 GB/s, which is the number that decides tok/s once a model fits.
14B · 15
| Model | Quant | Est. VRAM | Headroom | tok/s on RTX 4090 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek-Coder-V2-Lite Instruct16B-A2.4B | Q4_K_M | 10.08 GB | +1.9 GB | 145Estimated |
| DeepSeek-V2-Lite Chat16B-A2.4B | Q4_K_M | 10.08 GB | +1.9 GB | 142Estimated |
| StarCoder2 15B15B | Q4_K_M | 10.19 GB | +1.8 GB | 92Estimated |
| Qwen3 14B Instruct14B | Q4_K_M | 10.04 GB | +2 GB | 88 |
| Qwen2.5 14B Instruct14B | Q4_K_M | 10.14 GB | +1.9 GB | 98Estimated |
| DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B14B | Q4_K_M | 10.14 GB | +1.9 GB | 95 |
| Phi-4 14B14B | Q4_K_M | 10.17 GB | +1.8 GB | 88Community |
| Phi-3 Medium 14B Instruct14B | Q4_K_M | 9.73 GB | +2.3 GB | 102Estimated |
| Mistral Nemo 12B Instruct12B | Q4_K_M | 8.42 GB | +3.6 GB | 112Estimated |
| Gemma 3 12B IT12B | Q5_K_M | 9.84 GB | +2.2 GB | 92Estimated |
| Stable LM 2 12B Chat12B | Q4_K_M | 8.35 GB | +3.7 GB | 108Estimated |
| Llama 3.2 11B Vision Instruct11B | Q4_K_M | 7.66 GB | +4.3 GB | 88Estimated |
| Solar 10.7B Instruct11B | Q4_K_M | 7.6 GB | +4.4 GB | 125Estimated |
| Falcon 3 10B Instruct10B | Q4_K_M | 7.28 GB | +4.7 GB | 118Estimated |
| Gemma 2 9B Instruct9B | Q4_K_M | 7.3 GB | +4.7 GB | 132Estimated |
7B · 22
| Model | Quant | Est. VRAM | Headroom | tok/s on RTX 4090 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GLM-4-9B-Chat9B | Q8_0 | 10.16 GB | +1.8 GB | 105Estimated |
| Qwen3-VL 8B Instruct8B | Q8_0 | 10.39 GB | +1.6 GB | 108Estimated |
| Ministral 3 8B Instruct8B | Q8_0 | 10.02 GB | +2 GB | — |
| Qwen2-VL 7B Instruct7B | Q4_K_M | 5.49 GB | +6.5 GB | 72Estimated |
| Granite 3.1 8B Instruct8B | Q4_K_M | 5.88 GB | +6.1 GB | 142Estimated |
| Qwen3 8B Instruct8B | Q6_K | 7.64 GB | +4.4 GB | 122 |
| Llama 3.1 8B Instruct8B | Q8_0 | 9.47 GB | +2.5 GB | 118 |
| Nous Hermes 3 Llama 3.1 8B8B | Q4_K_M | 5.64 GB | +6.4 GB | 148Estimated |
| Aya 23 8B8B | Q4_K_M | 5.64 GB | +6.4 GB | 145Estimated |
| OpenChat 3.6 8B8B | Q4_K_M | 5.64 GB | +6.4 GB | 146Estimated |
| DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B8B | Q5_K_M | 6.51 GB | +5.5 GB | 128Estimated |
| InternLM2 7B Chat7B | Q4_K_M | 5.45 GB | +6.6 GB | 148Estimated |
| Qwen2.5 7B Instruct7B | Q6_K | 6.77 GB | +5.2 GB | 132 |
| Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct7B | Q4_K_M | 5.07 GB | +6.9 GB | 158Estimated |
| DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-7B7B | Q4_K_M | 5.07 GB | +6.9 GB | 152Estimated |
| Gemma 4 E4B ITE4B | Q8_0 | 8.46 GB | +3.5 GB | — |
| OLMo 2 7B Instruct7B | Q8_0 | 10.3 GB | +1.7 GB | 125Estimated |
| WizardLM-2 7B7B | Q4_K_M | 5.14 GB | +6.9 GB | 152Estimated |
| Mistral 7B Instruct v0.37B | Q6_K | 6.75 GB | +5.3 GB | 135Estimated |
| Zephyr 7B Beta7B | Q6_K | 6.75 GB | +5.3 GB | 132Estimated |
| Gemma 4 E2B ITE2B | Q8_0 | 5.2 GB | +6.8 GB | — |
| Gemma 3 4B IT4B | Q8_0 | 5.05 GB | +7 GB | 145Estimated |
≤3B · 10
| Model | Quant | Est. VRAM | Headroom | tok/s on RTX 4090 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen3 4B Instruct4B | Q6_K | 4.05 GB | +8 GB | 145 |
| Phi-4 Mini Instruct3.8B | Q8_0 | 4.81 GB | +7.2 GB | 262Estimated |
| Phi-3.5 Mini Instruct3.8B | Q8_0 | 5.89 GB | +6.1 GB | 255Estimated |
| Llama 3.2 3B Instruct3B | Q8_0 | 4.05 GB | +8 GB | 285Estimated |
| Qwen2.5 3B Instruct3B | Q8_0 | 3.59 GB | +8.4 GB | 290Estimated |
| Gemma 2 2B Instruct2B | Q8_0 | 3.34 GB | +8.7 GB | 320Estimated |
| Qwen3 1.7B Instruct1.7B | Q8_0 | 2.39 GB | +9.6 GB | 240Estimated |
| Qwen2.5 1.5B Instruct1.5B | Q8_0 | 1.83 GB | +10.2 GB | 410Estimated |
| Llama 3.2 1B Instruct1B | Q8_0 | 1.51 GB | +10.5 GB | 450Estimated |
| Qwen2.5 0.5B Instruct0.5B | Q8_0 | 0.6 GB | +11.4 GB | 540Estimated |
How this list is built
Each row is the lowest-perplexity-loss quant of that model whose estimated total — weights plus KV cache at 4K context plus activation buffer — uses at most 88% of the card. That is the calculator's "green" threshold, so every row here has real headroom rather than only just fitting. Raise the context length and the list shortens; the calculator lets you check any combination directly.
A further 1 models load but with no headroom to spare (up to 105% of VRAM) — the Quant Hub’s GPU chips count those too, which is why its number is higher.
Measured on this card
No benchmark runs in this index were recorded on a Mac M1 16G. Every figure on this page is calculated from the model architecture and the quant level — treat them as estimates, not measurements. The speed column in the tables above is an RTX 4090 figure shown for reference — it is not a speed on this card.
Cards with the same budget
What fits is decided by memory, so every 16GB card of this type returns the same list. These pages are not different answers — they differ in throughput, which this index does not measure per card.
The same 16GB in system memory is a different machine — everything on this page fits there, at a speed set by your DIMMs rather than a graphics bus: 16 GB RAM (CPU)
Stepping up
A Mac M3 Pro 18G (18GB) fits 1 more of the indexed models than this card. Mac M3 Pro 18G →
Common questions
What is the best local LLM for a Mac M1 16G?
For everyday use, Qwen2-VL 7B Instruct at Q4_K_M — about 5.5 GB of the card's 16 GB at 4K context, leaving 6.5 GB for a longer window. If you want the largest thing that will load, that is DeepSeek-Coder-V2-Lite Instruct at Q4_K_M (10.1 GB, 1.9 GB spare). "Best" here means best fit for the memory budget — this index does not run task benchmarks, so it cannot tell you which model is smarter.
Can a Mac M1 16G run InternLM2 20B Chat?
No. Its smallest build here, Q4_K_M, needs about 13.4 GB and this card has 12.0 GB usable — short by 1.4 GB before any context beyond 4K. The largest model this card does clear is DeepSeek-Coder-V2-Lite Instruct.
How many tokens per second does a Mac M1 16G do on an 8B model at Q4?
This index has no measured run on this card, so it does not publish a figure. What can be stated from specifications: generating a token requires reading every weight once, Llama 3.1 8B Instruct at Q4_K_M is 4.6 GB of weights, and this card moves 68 GB/s — a ceiling near 15 tok/s. Batch size, context length, the runtime and how much of the model sits in cache all take you below it.
Mac M1 16G or RTX 5080 for local LLMs?
They hold the same models: 16 GB against 16 GB fits 47 and 53 of 87 respectively at 4K. The difference is throughput — 68 GB/s against 960 GB/s, a 14.1× gap in how fast the weights can be read, which is what token generation is bound by. The RTX 5080 generates faster on any model both can hold.
47 of 87 indexed models fit comfortably in 16GB at 4K context, each at the highest-quality quant that still leaves headroom.
This page's figures change when the model or the runtime does.Last updated 2026-10-02 RSS → /feed.xml