deepseek
16B parameters
Commercial OK

DeepSeek V3 Lite (16B MoE)

Distillation of DeepSeek V3 to a smaller MoE. 16B total / 2.4B active. Captures most of V3's reasoning at consumer-card-friendly memory.

License: DeepSeek License·Released Jan 10, 2026·Context: 131,072 tokens

Overview

Distillation of DeepSeek V3 to a smaller MoE. 16B total / 2.4B active. Captures most of V3's reasoning at consumer-card-friendly memory.

Family & lineage

How this model relates to others in its lineage. Family members share architecture and training-data roots; parent / children edges record direct distillation or fine-tune relationships.

Strengths

  • MoE efficiency at consumer-tier VRAM
  • DeepSeek V3 reasoning lineage

Weaknesses

  • Active params (2.4B) limit reasoning depth vs full V3

Quantization variants

Each quantization trades model quality for file size and VRAM. Q4_K_M is the most popular starting point.

QuantizationFile sizeVRAM required
Q4_K_M9.5 GB12 GB

Get the model

HuggingFace

Original weights

huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3-Lite

Source repository — direct quantization required.

Hardware that runs this

Cards with enough VRAM for at least one quantization of DeepSeek V3 Lite (16B MoE).

Compare alternatives

Models worth comparing

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Frequently asked

What's the minimum VRAM to run DeepSeek V3 Lite (16B MoE)?

12GB of VRAM is enough to run DeepSeek V3 Lite (16B MoE) at the Q4_K_M quantization (file size 9.5 GB). Higher-quality quantizations need more.

Can I use DeepSeek V3 Lite (16B MoE) commercially?

Yes — DeepSeek V3 Lite (16B MoE) ships under the DeepSeek License, which permits commercial use. Always read the license text before deployment.

What's the context length of DeepSeek V3 Lite (16B MoE)?

DeepSeek V3 Lite (16B MoE) supports a context window of 131,072 tokens (about 131K).

Source: huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3-Lite

Reviewed by RunLocalAI Editorial. See our editorial policy for how we research and verify model claims.