Best Local LLMs for a 64GB+ Mac (2026)
M2/M3/M4 Max & Ultra with 64GB+ unified memory · ~46 GB usable · real GGUF sizes, refreshed automatically
This is the party trick of big Macs: ~46GB of model-usable memory runs 70B at Q4 and every MoE below it — workstation-class local AI in a laptop or a small silver box.
Best overall
Llama 3.3 70B IQ4_XS
The 70B workhorse; needs 48GB VRAM or a 64GB+ Mac at Q4.
Best for coding
Llama 3.3 70B IQ4_XS
The 70B workhorse; needs 48GB VRAM or a 64GB+ Mac at Q4.
Best for reasoning
DeepSeek R1 Distill 70B IQ4_XS
Big local reasoning; 48GB+ territory.
With vision
Gemma 3 27B Q8_0
Top open chat quality per GB in the Gemma line; vision included.
| Model | Params | Best quant | Download | Context | Run it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Llama 3.3 70Bchatcoding | 70.6B | IQ4_XS | 37.9 GB | ~4k | ollama run llama3.3:70b |
| DeepSeek R1 Distill 70Breasoning | 70.6B | IQ4_XS | 37.9 GB | ~4k | ollama run deepseek-r1:70b |
| Qwen2.5 Coder 32Bcoding | 32.8B | Q8_0 | 34.82 GB | ~16k | ollama run qwen2.5-coder:32b |
| Qwen3 32Bchatcoding | 32.8B | Q8_0 | 34.82 GB | ~16k | ollama run qwen3:32b |
| DeepSeek R1 Distill 32Breasoning | 32.8B | Q8_0 | 34.82 GB | ~16k | ollama run deepseek-r1:32b |
| Qwen3 30B A3B (MoE)chatcoding | 30.5B | Q8_0 | 32.48 GB | ~16k | ollama run qwen3:30b |
| Gemma 3 27Bchatvision | 27B | Q8_0 | 28.71 GB | ~32k | ollama run gemma3:27b |
| Mistral Small 3.2 24Bchatcoding | 24B | Q8_0 | 25.05 GB | ~32k | ollama run mistral-small3.2 |
| gpt-oss-20bchatreasoning | 21B | Q8_0 | 12.11 GB | ~64k | ollama run gpt-oss:20b |
| Qwen3 14Bchatcoding | 14.8B | Q8_0 | 15.7 GB | ~128k | ollama run qwen3:14b |
| Qwen2.5 Coder 14Bcoding | 14.8B | Q8_0 | 15.7 GB | ~128k | ollama run qwen2.5-coder:14b |
| DeepSeek R1 Distill 14Breasoning | 14.8B | Q8_0 | 15.7 GB | ~128k | ollama run deepseek-r1:14b |
| Phi-4 14Breasoningcoding | 14.7B | Q8_0 | 15.58 GB | ~128k | ollama run phi4:14b |
| Mistral Nemo 12Bchatlong-context | 12.2B | Q8_0 | 13.02 GB | ~128k | ollama run mistral-nemo:12b |
| Gemma 3 12Bchatvision | 12.2B | Q8_0 | 12.51 GB | ~128k | ollama run gemma3:12b |
| Qwen2.5 VL 7Bvisionchat | 8.3B | Q8_0 | 8.95 GB | ~128k | ollama run qwen2.5vl:7b |
| Qwen3 8Bchatcoding | 8.2B | Q8_0 | 8.71 GB | ~128k | ollama run qwen3:8b |
| Llama 3.1 8Bchat | 8B | Q8_0 | 8.54 GB | ~128k | ollama run llama3.1:8b |
| Qwen2.5 Coder 7Bcoding | 7.6B | Q8_0 | 8.1 GB | ~128k | ollama run qwen2.5-coder:7b |
| DeepSeek R1 Distill 7Breasoning | 7.6B | Q8_0 | 8.1 GB | ~128k | ollama run deepseek-r1:7b |
| Gemma 3 4Bchatvision | 4.3B | Q8_0 | 4.13 GB | ~128k | ollama run gemma3:4b |
| Qwen3 4Bchatreasoning | 4B | Q8_0 | 4.28 GB | ~128k | ollama run qwen3:4b |
| Llama 3.2 3Bchat | 3.2B | Q8_0 | 3.42 GB | ~128k | ollama run llama3.2:3b |
| Qwen3 1.7Bchat | 1.7B | Q8_0 | 2.17 GB | ~128k | ollama run qwen3:1.7b |
| Llama 3.2 1Bchat | 1.2B | Q8_0 | 1.32 GB | ~128k | ollama run llama3.2:1b |
Estimates: file size × 1.05 + KV-cache + 0.4GB buffer; GPU usable = VRAM − 0.6GB, Apple usable = 72% of unified memory. File sizes are real GGUF bytes from Hugging Face, refreshed automatically. No affiliate links.