← All MacBook Pro 16" models

MacBook Pro 16" M3 Pro

The M3 Pro MacBook Pro 16" runs local models at 150 GB/s of memory bandwidth with 18 to 36 GB of unified memory. On Apple Silicon that memory is shared with the GPU, so the whole pool is available for weights: at 36 GB you can hold roughly a 47B dense model at Q4. The Pro roughly doubles the base chip's memory bus. That moves mid-size models from usable to comfortable without moving you into desktop money.

Apple no longer sells this configuration new. It stays fully evaluated here because the used market is where most of its local AI value now sits.

Specifications

ChipApple M3 Pro
CPU cores12
GPU cores18
Unified memory18 or 36 GB
Memory bandwidth150 GB/s
Neural Engine18 TOPS
Released2023
AvailabilityUsed market

Memory bandwidth is faster than 22% of the Apple Silicon chips shipped in a Mac, against a 819 GB/s peak.

Its memory ceiling is above 39% of them, against a 512 GB peak.

Pick your configuration

Every option Apple sells with this chip. The model list below recomputes against the one you pick.

Unified memory

What each memory option runs

Unified memory is the ceiling and it is soldered, so this is the decision you cannot revisit.

18 GB unified memory

15 GB usable for weights · 150 GB/s

3,264 of 3,641 models fit, and 2,998 of them run with headroom rather than as a squeeze.

Largest model at Q4
EuroLLM 22B Instruct 2512 · 22.64B
Best all-round pick
Qwen3.5 0.8B · Q8_0 · ~90 tok/s

36 GB unified memory

31 GB usable for weights · 150 GB/s

3,417 of 3,641 models fit, and 3,252 of them run with headroom rather than as a squeeze.

Largest model at Q4
Chinese Mixtral 8x7B · 46.91B
Best all-round pick
Qwen3.5 0.8B · Q8_0 · ~90 tok/s

What a 18 GB M3 Pro MacBook Pro 16" can run

Every model in the database against this exact configuration, at 150 GB/s. Ratings and speeds are the same numbers the model pages show.

Showing 3641 of 3641 models

Qwen3.5 0.8B

Multimodal · Alibaba · 2026-02-28

Q8_0Excellent
1.5 GB8% of RAM~90 tok/sEstimated0.87B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen3.5 0.8B Base

Multimodal · Alibaba · 2026-02-28

Q8_0Excellent
1.5 GB8% of RAM~90 tok/sEstimated0.87B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen3.5 2B

Multimodal · Alibaba · 2026-02-28

Q8_0Excellent
3.0 GB17% of RAM~35 tok/sEstimated2.27B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen3.5 2B Base

Multimodal · Alibaba · 2026-02-28

Q8_0Excellent
3.0 GB17% of RAM~35 tok/sEstimated2.27B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 1.2B

General · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
1.8 GB10% of RAM~67 tok/sEstimated1.17B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 ColBERT 350M

General · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
0.9 GB5% of RAM~224 tok/sEstimated0.35B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2.5 1.2B Thinking

Reasoning · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
1.8 GB10% of RAM~67 tok/sEstimated1.17B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2.5 1.2B Base

General · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
1.8 GB10% of RAM~67 tok/sEstimated1.17B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 350M

General · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
0.9 GB5% of RAM~224 tok/sEstimated0.35B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 700M

General · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
1.3 GB7% of RAM~106 tok/sEstimated0.74B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 1.2B Extract

General · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
1.8 GB10% of RAM~67 tok/sEstimated1.17B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 350M Extract

General · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
0.9 GB5% of RAM~224 tok/sEstimated0.35B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 350M PII Extract JP

General · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
0.9 GB5% of RAM~224 tok/sEstimated0.35B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 1.2B Tool

General · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
1.8 GB10% of RAM~67 tok/sEstimated1.17B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 350M ENJP MT

General · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
0.9 GB5% of RAM~224 tok/sEstimated0.35B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 1.2B RAG

General · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
1.8 GB10% of RAM~67 tok/sEstimated1.17B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 350M Math

Reasoning · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
0.9 GB5% of RAM~224 tok/sEstimated0.35B params
Run with ToolPiper
granite 4.0 h tiny

General · ibm-granite · 2025-09-16

Q8_0Excellent
8.2 GB46% of RAMBenchmark needed6.94B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2.5 1.2B Instruct

Chat · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
1.8 GB10% of RAM~67 tok/sEstimated1.17B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 8B A1B

General · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
9.8 GB54% of RAMBenchmark needed8.3B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2.5 1.2B JP

Chat · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
1.8 GB10% of RAM~67 tok/sEstimated1.17B params
Run with ToolPiper
VAETKI 7B A1B

General · NCAI · 2025-12-29

Q8_0Excellent
8.6 GB48% of RAMBenchmark needed7.25B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 2.6B

General · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
3.4 GB19% of RAM~31 tok/sEstimated2.57B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 2.6B Transcript

General · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
3.4 GB19% of RAM~31 tok/sEstimated2.57B params
Run with ToolPiper
VAETKI VL 7B A1B

Multimodal · NCAI · 2025-12-29

Q8_0Excellent
9.0 GB50% of RAMBenchmark needed7.58B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 VL 450M

Multimodal · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
1.0 GB6% of RAM~175 tok/sEstimated0.45B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2.5 VL 1.6B

Multimodal · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
2.3 GB13% of RAM~49 tok/sEstimated1.6B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 VL 1.6B

Multimodal · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
2.3 GB13% of RAM~50 tok/sEstimated1.58B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2.5 Audio 1.5B

General · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
2.2 GB12% of RAM~52 tok/sEstimated1.5B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 Audio 1.5B

General · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
2.2 GB12% of RAM~52 tok/sEstimated1.5B params
Run with ToolPiper
SmolLM3 3B

Reasoning · HuggingFace · 2025-07-08

Q8_0Excellent
3.8 GB21% of RAM~26 tok/sEstimated3B params
Run with ToolPiper
EXAONE 4.0 1.2B

General · LG AI · 2025-07-15

Q8_0Excellent
1.8 GB10% of RAM~65 tok/sEstimated1.2B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 2.6B Exp

Chat · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
3.4 GB19% of RAM~31 tok/sEstimated2.57B params
Run with ToolPiper
Jolia

General · raidium · 2026-06-15

Q8_0Excellent
0.5 GB3% of RAM~3,929 tok/sEstimated0.02B params
Run with ToolPiper
embeddinggemma GTAIDE 300m 2605

Embedding · taide · 2026-06-12

Q8_0Excellent
0.8 GB5% of RAM~262 tok/sEstimated0.3B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen3 0.6B

General · Alibaba · 2025-04-27

Q8_0Excellent
1.3 GB7% of RAM~105 tok/sEstimated0.75B params
Run with ToolPiper
GLM OCR

Multimodal · zai-org

Q8_0Excellent
2.0 GB11% of RAM~59 tok/sEstimated1.33B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen2 0.5B

General · Alibaba

Q8_0Excellent
1.0 GB6% of RAM~160 tok/sEstimated0.49B params
Run with ToolPiper
MiniCPM V 4.6

Multimodal · openbmb

Q8_0Excellent
2.0 GB11% of RAM~60 tok/sEstimated1.3B params
Run with ToolPiper
surya ocr 2

Multimodal · datalab-to

Q8_0Excellent
1.3 GB7% of RAM~114 tok/sEstimated0.69B params
Run with ToolPiper
MiniCPM5 1B

General · openbmb

Q8_0Excellent
1.7 GB9% of RAM~73 tok/sEstimated1.08B params
Run with ToolPiper
Ilama 3.2 1B

General · hmellor

Q8_0Excellent
1.9 GB10% of RAM~63 tok/sEstimated1.24B params
Run with ToolPiper
distil lfm25 shellper

General · distil-labs

Q8_0Excellent
0.9 GB5% of RAM~224 tok/sEstimated0.35B params
Run with ToolPiper
OTel LLM 1.2B IT

General · farbodtavakkoli

Q8_0Excellent
1.8 GB10% of RAM~65 tok/sEstimated1.21B params
Run with ToolPiper
granite 4.0 tiny preview

General · ibm-granite

Q8_0Excellent
7.9 GB44% of RAMBenchmark needed6.67B params
Run with ToolPiper
reformer crime and punishment

General · Google

Q8_0Excellent
0.5 GB3% of RAM~7,857 tok/sEstimated0.01B params
Run with ToolPiper
Solar Open 100B

General · Upstage

Q8_0Excellent
9.5 GB53% of RAMBenchmark needed8.05B params
Run with ToolPiper
gpt oss safeguard 120b

General · openai

Q8_0Excellent
3.1 GB17% of RAMBenchmark needed2.37B params
Run with ToolPiper
PaddleOCR VL 1.5

General · paddlepaddle

Q8_0Excellent
1.6 GB9% of RAM~82 tok/sEstimated0.96B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2.5 350M Base

General · Liquid AI

Q8_0Excellent
0.9 GB5% of RAM~224 tok/sEstimated0.35B params
Run with ToolPiper
plamo 2 1b

General · pfnet

Q8_0Excellent
1.9 GB11% of RAM~61 tok/sEstimated1.29B params
Run with ToolPiper
MiniCPM5 1B SFT

General · openbmb

Q8_0Excellent
1.7 GB9% of RAM~73 tok/sEstimated1.08B params
Run with ToolPiper
ERNIE 4.5 0.3B PT

General · baidu

Q8_0Excellent
0.9 GB5% of RAM~218 tok/sEstimated0.36B params
Run with ToolPiper
Trinity Nano Preview

General · arcee-ai

Q8_0Excellent
7.3 GB41% of RAMBenchmark needed6.12B params
Run with ToolPiper
Orpo Llama 3.2 1B 15k

General · adamlucek

Q8_0Excellent
1.9 GB10% of RAM~63 tok/sEstimated1.24B params
Run with ToolPiper
llama 3.2 1b code instruct

Coding · shahriarferdoush

Q8_0Excellent
1.9 GB10% of RAM~63 tok/sEstimated1.24B params
Run with ToolPiper
Llama 3.2 1B Aegis SFT DPO

General · ahczhg

Q8_0Excellent
1.9 GB10% of RAM~63 tok/sEstimated1.24B params
Run with ToolPiper
CyberXP_Agent_Llama_3.2_1B

General · abaryan

Q8_0Excellent
1.9 GB10% of RAM~63 tok/sEstimated1.24B params
Run with ToolPiper
Tashkeel 700M

General · etherll

Q8_0Excellent
1.3 GB7% of RAM~106 tok/sEstimated0.74B params
Run with ToolPiper
OTel LLM 20B IT

General · farbodtavakkoli

Q8_0Excellent
2.5 GB14% of RAMBenchmark needed1.77B params
Run with ToolPiper
FastVLM 0.5B

General · kamilamila

Q8_0Excellent
1.2 GB7% of RAM~127 tok/sEstimated0.62B params
Run with ToolPiper
PaddleOCR VL

General · paddlepaddle

Q8_0Excellent
1.6 GB9% of RAM~82 tok/sEstimated0.96B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2.5 350M home assistant sft

General · ordenwills

Q8_0Excellent
0.9 GB5% of RAM~224 tok/sEstimated0.35B params
Run with ToolPiper
Recurrent Llama 3.2 train recurrence 32

General · smcleish

Q8_0Excellent
2.1 GB11% of RAM~57 tok/sEstimated1.39B params
Run with ToolPiper
llama3.2_1b_2025_uncensored_v2

General · carsenk

Q8_0Excellent
1.9 GB10% of RAM~63 tok/sEstimated1.24B params
Run with ToolPiper
OpenReasoning Nemotron 1.5B

Reasoning · nvidia

Q8_0Excellent
2.2 GB12% of RAM~51 tok/sEstimated1.54B params
Run with ToolPiper
granite 3.1 1b a400m base

General · ibm-granite

Q8_0Excellent
2.0 GB11% of RAMBenchmark needed1.33B params
Run with ToolPiper
MiniCPM V 4.6 Thinking

General · openbmb

Q8_0Excellent
2.0 GB11% of RAM~60 tok/sEstimated1.3B params
Run with ToolPiper
gpt oss 120b lora merged redux

General · pyoakum

Q8_0Excellent
6.5 GB36% of RAMBenchmark needed5.35B params
Run with ToolPiper
granite 3.1 3b a800m base

General · ibm-granite

Q8_0Excellent
4.2 GB23% of RAMBenchmark needed3.3B params
Run with ToolPiper
MiniCPM V 4.6 Abliterated AND Disinhibited

General · treadon

Q8_0Excellent
2.0 GB11% of RAM~60 tok/sEstimated1.3B params
Run with ToolPiper
ODIN C1

General · skis-ai-research

Q8_0Excellent
1.8 GB10% of RAM~67 tok/sEstimated1.17B params
Run with ToolPiper
llama3.2_1B_vl

General · thkim0305

Q8_0Excellent
1.6 GB9% of RAM~79 tok/sEstimated1B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen3.5 0.8B Claude 4.6 Opus Reasoning Distilled

Reasoning · jackrong

Q8_0Excellent
1.5 GB8% of RAM~90 tok/sEstimated0.87B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen3.5 0.8B Coder Calude Full

Coding · rahul7star

Q8_0Excellent
1.5 GB8% of RAM~90 tok/sEstimated0.87B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen3 Coder Next DFlash

Coding · z-lab

Q8_0Excellent
1.7 GB9% of RAM~73 tok/sEstimated1.08B params
Run with ToolPiper
Nemotron 3 Nano Omni 30B A3B JANGTQ4

General · osaurusai

Q8_0Excellent
6.9 GB38% of RAMBenchmark needed5.75B params
Run with ToolPiper
LLAMA 3.2 1B OpenHermes2.5

General · artificialguybr

Q8_0Excellent
1.9 GB10% of RAM~63 tok/sEstimated1.24B params
Run with ToolPiper
Dayhoff 170m GR

General · Microsoft

Q8_0Excellent
0.7 GB4% of RAMBenchmark needed0.17B params
Run with ToolPiper
Dayhoff 170m UR90

General · Microsoft

Q8_0Excellent
0.7 GB4% of RAMBenchmark needed0.17B params
Run with ToolPiper
Hunyuan 0.5B Pretrain

General · tencent

Q8_0Excellent
1.1 GB6% of RAM~146 tok/sEstimated0.54B params
Run with ToolPiper
GLM 0.5B

General · primeintellect

Q8_0Excellent
1.1 GB6% of RAMBenchmark needed0.54B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen3.5 4B

Multimodal · Alibaba · 2026-02-27

Q8_0Excellent
5.7 GB32% of RAM~17 tok/sEstimated4.66B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen3 VL 2B Instruct

Multimodal · Alibaba

Q8_0Excellent
2.9 GB16% of RAM~37 tok/sEstimated2.13B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen2.5 1.5B

General · Alibaba

Q8_0Excellent
2.2 GB12% of RAM~51 tok/sEstimated1.54B params
Run with ToolPiper
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

Reasoning · DeepSeek

Q8_0Excellent
2.5 GB14% of RAM~44 tok/sEstimated1.78B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen3.5 4B Base

Multimodal · Alibaba · 2026-02-27

Q8_0Excellent
5.7 GB32% of RAM~17 tok/sEstimated4.66B params
Run with ToolPiper
VideoLLaMA3 2B Image HF

Multimodal · lkhl

Q8_0Excellent
2.7 GB15% of RAM~40 tok/sEstimated1.96B params
Run with ToolPiper
ReaderLM v2

General · jinaai

Q8_0Excellent
2.2 GB12% of RAM~51 tok/sEstimated1.54B params
Run with ToolPiper
typhoon ocr1.5 2b

Reasoning · typhoon-ai

Q8_0Excellent
2.9 GB16% of RAM~37 tok/sEstimated2.13B params
Run with ToolPiper
PARD Llama 3.2 1B

General · amd

Q8_0Excellent
2.2 GB12% of RAM~52 tok/sEstimated1.5B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2 VL 3B

Multimodal · Liquid AI · 2025-11-28

Q8_0Excellent
3.8 GB21% of RAM~26 tok/sEstimated3B params
Run with ToolPiper
transcription cleanup llama3.2 1b

General · getonit

Q8_0Excellent
2.2 GB12% of RAM~52 tok/sEstimated1.5B params
Run with ToolPiper
DeepScaleR 1.5B Preview

General · agentica-org

Q8_0Excellent
2.5 GB14% of RAM~44 tok/sEstimated1.78B params
Run with ToolPiper
SEX_ROLEPLAY 3.2 1B

General · novaciano

Q8_0Excellent
2.2 GB12% of RAM~52 tok/sEstimated1.5B params
Run with ToolPiper
JiRackTernary_1b

General · kgrabko

Q8_0Excellent
2.2 GB12% of RAM~52 tok/sEstimated1.5B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen3 ASR 0.6B

General · bezzam

Q8_0Excellent
1.4 GB8% of RAM~101 tok/sEstimated0.78B params
Run with ToolPiper
granite 4.0 h 1b

General · ibm-granite

Q8_0Excellent
2.1 GB12% of RAM~54 tok/sEstimated1.46B params
Run with ToolPiper
Lucy 128k

General · menlo

Q8_0Excellent
2.4 GB13% of RAM~46 tok/sEstimated1.72B params
Run with ToolPiper
Falcon H1 1.5B Base

General · TII

Q8_0Excellent
2.2 GB12% of RAM~51 tok/sEstimated1.55B params
Run with ToolPiper
evolai qwen2.5 1.5b

General · roystar

Q8_0Excellent
2.2 GB12% of RAM~51 tok/sEstimated1.54B params
Run with ToolPiper
VibeThinker 1.5B

General · weiboai

Q8_0Excellent
2.5 GB14% of RAM~44 tok/sEstimated1.78B params
Run with ToolPiper
Falcon H1 1.5B Deep Base

General · TII

Q8_0Excellent
2.2 GB12% of RAM~51 tok/sEstimated1.55B params
Run with ToolPiper
EXAONE Deep 2.4B

General · lgai-exaone · 2025-03-12

Q8_0Excellent
3.2 GB18% of RAM~33 tok/sEstimated2.41B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen3 1.7B

General · Alibaba · 2025-04-27

Q8_0Excellent
2.8 GB15% of RAM~39 tok/sEstimated2.03B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen2.5 0.5B

General · Alibaba

Q8_0Excellent
1.0 GB6% of RAM~160 tok/sEstimated0.49B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen3 0.6B Base

General · Alibaba

Q8_0Excellent
1.2 GB6% of RAM~131 tok/sEstimated0.6B params
Run with ToolPiper
harrier oss v1 0.6b

General · Microsoft

Q8_0Excellent
1.2 GB6% of RAM~131 tok/sEstimated0.6B params
Run with ToolPiper
InternVL3 1B hf

Multimodal · opengvlab

Q8_0Excellent
1.5 GB9% of RAM~84 tok/sEstimated0.94B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen3Guard Gen 0.6B

General · Alibaba

Q8_0Excellent
1.3 GB7% of RAM~105 tok/sEstimated0.75B params
Run with ToolPiper
LFM2.5 8B A1B

General · Liquid AI

Q8_0Excellent
9.9 GB55% of RAMBenchmark needed8.47B params
Run with ToolPiper
voyage 4 nano

General · voyageai

Q8_0Excellent
0.9 GB5% of RAM~224 tok/sEstimated0.35B params
Run with ToolPiper
harrier oss v1 270m

General · Microsoft

Q8_0Excellent
0.8 GB4% of RAM~291 tok/sEstimated0.27B params
Run with ToolPiper
OTel LLM 0.6B IT

General · farbodtavakkoli

Q8_0Excellent
1.0 GB6% of RAM~175 tok/sEstimated0.45B params
Run with ToolPiper
OTel LLM 270M IT

General · farbodtavakkoli

Q8_0Excellent
0.8 GB4% of RAM~291 tok/sEstimated0.27B params
Run with ToolPiper
internlm2_5 step prover critic

General · internlm

Q8_0Excellent
2.1 GB11% of RAM~56 tok/sEstimated1.4B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen3 VL 2B Thinking

General · Alibaba

Q8_0Excellent
2.9 GB16% of RAM~37 tok/sEstimated2.13B params
Run with ToolPiper
OTel LLM 1B IT

General · farbodtavakkoli

Q8_0Excellent
1.6 GB9% of RAM~79 tok/sEstimated1B params
Run with ToolPiper
pii extractor gemma 3 270m it

General · jakobhuss

Q8_0Excellent
0.8 GB4% of RAM~291 tok/sEstimated0.27B params
Run with ToolPiper
OTel LLM 1.7B IT

General · farbodtavakkoli

Q8_0Excellent
2.2 GB12% of RAM~53 tok/sEstimated1.49B params
Run with ToolPiper
deepseek coder 1.3b instruct

Coding · DeepSeek

Q8_0Excellent
2.0 GB11% of RAM~58 tok/sEstimated1.35B params
Run with ToolPiper
llava interleave qwen 0.5b hf

General · llava-hf

Q8_0Excellent
1.1 GB6% of RAM~157 tok/sEstimated0.5B params
Run with ToolPiper
DynaGuard 1.7B

General · tomg-group-umd

Q8_0Excellent
2.2 GB12% of RAM~53 tok/sEstimated1.49B params
Run with ToolPiper
MiniCPM4 0.5B

General · openbmb

Q8_0Excellent
1.0 GB5% of RAM~183 tok/sEstimated0.43B params
Run with ToolPiper
Kurtis EON1 Hybrid 0.7B v0.1.1

General · mrs83

Q8_0Excellent
1.2 GB7% of RAM~117 tok/sEstimated0.67B params
Run with ToolPiper
deepseek coder 1.3b base

Coding · DeepSeek

Q8_0Excellent
1.6 GB9% of RAM~78 tok/sEstimated1.01B params
Run with ToolPiper
granite 4.0 350m base

General · ibm-granite

Q8_0Excellent
0.9 GB5% of RAM~224 tok/sEstimated0.35B params
Run with ToolPiper
NuExtract tiny

General · numind

Q8_0Excellent
1.0 GB6% of RAM~171 tok/sEstimated0.46B params
Run with ToolPiper
PolyGuard Qwen Smol

General · toxicityprompts

Q8_0Excellent
1.0 GB6% of RAM~160 tok/sEstimated0.49B params
Run with ToolPiper
Heron NVILA Lite 1B hf

General · turing-motors

Q8_0Excellent
1.5 GB8% of RAM~86 tok/sEstimated0.91B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen3 4B Kimi2.5 Reasoning Distilled

Reasoning · khazarai

Q8_0Excellent
4.0 GB22% of RAM~25 tok/sEstimated3.13B params
Run with ToolPiper
granite 4.0 350m

General · ibm-granite

Q8_0Excellent
0.9 GB5% of RAM~224 tok/sEstimated0.35B params
Run with ToolPiper
Ouro 1.4B Thinking

General · bytedance

Q8_0Excellent
2.1 GB12% of RAM~55 tok/sEstimated1.43B params
Run with ToolPiper
nanoLLaVA

General · qnguyen3

Q8_0Excellent
1.7 GB9% of RAM~75 tok/sEstimated1.05B params
Run with ToolPiper
SpatialLM1.1 Qwen 0.5B Structured3D SFT

General · ysmao

Q8_0Excellent
1.2 GB6% of RAM~131 tok/sEstimated0.6B params
Run with ToolPiper
InternVL3_5 1B HF

General · opengvlab

Q8_0Excellent
1.7 GB9% of RAM~74 tok/sEstimated1.06B params
Run with ToolPiper
llava onevision qwen2 0.5b ov

General · lmms-lab

Q8_0Excellent
1.1 GB6% of RAM~157 tok/sEstimated0.5B params
Run with ToolPiper
Qwen3 VL 2B RRG SFT

General · dmusingu

Q8_0Excellent
2.9 GB16% of RAM~37 tok/sEstimated2.13B params
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Qwen3 0.3B distil

General · tabularisai

Q8_0Excellent
0.9 GB5% of RAM~207 tok/sEstimated0.38B params
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NuExtract 1.5 tiny

General · numind

Q8_0Excellent
1.0 GB6% of RAM~160 tok/sEstimated0.49B params
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TinyMixtral 4x248M MoE

General · isotonic

Q8_0Excellent
1.3 GB7% of RAMBenchmark needed0.7B params
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Ovis2 1B hf

General · thisisiron

Q8_0Excellent
1.8 GB10% of RAM~70 tok/sEstimated1.13B params
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Nemotron Flash 1B

General · nvidia

Q8_0Excellent
1.6 GB9% of RAMBenchmark needed0.97B params
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SpatialLM1.1 Qwen 0.5B

General · manycore-research

Q8_0Excellent
1.2 GB6% of RAM~131 tok/sEstimated0.6B params
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Miss MARTHA hot POCKET edition 2B OMNI

General · zero-point-ai

Q8_0Excellent
3.0 GB17% of RAM~35 tok/sEstimated2.27B params
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Qwen3 0.6B diffusion mdlm v0.1

General · dllm-hub

Q8_0Excellent
1.3 GB7% of RAM~105 tok/sEstimated0.75B params
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Huihui MoE 0.8B 2E

General · huihui-ai

Q8_0Excellent
1.5 GB8% of RAMBenchmark needed0.86B params
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Youtu LLM 2B

General · tencent

Q8_0Excellent
2.7 GB15% of RAM~40 tok/sEstimated1.96B params
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PARD Qwen3 0.6B

General · amd

Q8_0Excellent
1.3 GB7% of RAM~105 tok/sEstimated0.75B params
Run with ToolPiper
llavaqwen2.5 0.5b finetune hier col mask moe sparse 4e 2k sp0.9_20260418_063208

General · kkhya

Q8_0Excellent
1.1 GB6% of RAM~157 tok/sEstimated0.5B params
Run with ToolPiper

Measured on the M3 Pro

Nobody has submitted a benchmark on the M3 Pro yet, so every speed on this page is the formula estimate rather than a measured run. The estimate is bandwidth-driven and calibrated against chips that do have data, which makes it a good guide and not a promise.

ToolPiper contributes a result anonymously when you run the benchmark, and the leaderboard shows every chip that already has one.

Where to go from here

What each step actually changes for local models, rather than which one is newer.

One tier up

MacBook Pro 16" M3 Max

2.7x the memory bandwidth, up to 128 GB instead of 36 GB

Newer generation

MacBook Pro 16" M5 Pro

2x the memory bandwidth, up to 64 GB instead of 36 GB

Used market alternative

MacBook Pro 16" M2 Pro

1.3x the memory bandwidth, 32 GB ceiling instead of 36 GB

Same chip, other Mac

MacBook Pro 14" M3 Pro

The same chip in a different Mac

Why unified memory is the number that matters

On a PC the model has to fit in GPU VRAM, which is a separate pool from system RAM and usually the smaller of the two. Apple Silicon has one pool. The M3 Pro's 150 GB/s bus is shared by CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine, so a 36 GB machine can hand almost all of that to a model with no copy across a bus.

Apple stopped selling this one, which is exactly why it is interesting. The 16-inch chassis has the most thermal headroom Apple ships in a laptop, so sustained token throughput stays close to the burst figure. A used M3 Pro at 36 GB still gives you 150 GB/s and a hard 47B ceiling, and neither number degrades with age the way a battery does.

Common questions

Can the M3 Pro MacBook Pro 16" run a 70B model?

No. A 70B model at Q4_K_M needs about 46 GB, and the largest M3 Pro MacBook Pro 16" tops out at 36 GB, which leaves about 31 GB for weights. The practical ceiling on this machine is around 47B parameters at Q4.

How much unified memory should I get with the M3 Pro MacBook Pro 16"?

Memory is the only spec that changes what you can run at all. 18 GB holds about a 22B model at Q4; 36 GB holds about 47B. It is soldered, so this is a one-time decision, and it is the upgrade worth paying for before core count.

How fast are local LLMs on the M3 Pro?

Token generation is bandwidth-bound, so M3 Pro throughput scales with its 150 GB/s memory bus. Divide bandwidth by the size of the weights actually read per token to get the ceiling, then expect roughly half of that in practice. A 7B model at Q4 reads about 4 GB per token pass, so the M3 Pro lands in the tens of tokens per second and a 70B model lands in the single digits.

Is a used M3 Pro MacBook Pro 16" still worth buying for local AI?

For inference, the specs that matter do not age: 150 GB/s and up to 36 GB of unified memory are the same numbers today as they were in 2023. A used M3 Pro at the top memory option usually beats a new base-tier machine at the same price on both. Check the battery and the display, not the silicon.

Run these models on your MacBook Pro 16"

ToolPiper downloads, manages, and runs local models on Apple Silicon. Free, and nothing leaves the machine.

Get ToolPiperCompare against another Mac