What can Apple Mac Studio (M3 Ultra) run locally?

238 models fit comfortably on Apple Mac Studio (M3 Ultra) with 256 GB system RAM. 0 more run with tradeoffs. Top pick: DeepSeek V4 Flash (284B MoE).

What's the recommended runner for this hardware?

MLX-LM (Apple Metal). This is the runner that gives best tokens-per-second on Apple Mac Studio (M3 Ultra) based on macos support and the GPU backend.

What can Apple Mac Studio (M3 Ultra) run for long context?

Build: Mac Studio M3 Ultra 256GB

Memory: 256 GB unified memory

Runner: MLX-LM (Apple Metal)

Any Chat Coding Agents Reasoning Vision Long context Creative

Runs comfortably
238 models

Ranked by fit for long context use case + predicted speed. Click a row for VRAM breakdown.

#1DeepSeek V4 Flash (284B MoE)

284B

deepseek

Commercial OK

Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 2,048VRAM: 206.1 GBHeadroom: 41.9 GB

tok/s

Estimated

Weights

162.00 GB

KV cache

35.50 GB

Activations

8.10 GB

Runtime

0.50 GB

Model details →

#2Ministral 3B Instruct

mistral

Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 4.0 GBHeadroom: 244.0 GB

243

tok/s

Estimated

Weights

1.90 GB

KV cache

1.50 GB

Activations

0.10 GB

Runtime

0.50 GB

Model details →

#3Phi-3.5 Mini Instruct

3.8B

phi

Commercial OK

Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 6.7 GBHeadroom: 241.3 GB

ollama run phi3.5:3.8b

109

tok/s

Estimated

Weights

4.10 GB

KV cache

1.90 GB

Activations

0.21 GB

Runtime

0.50 GB

Model details →

#4Falcon Mamba 7B

falcon

Commercial OK

Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 8.4 GBHeadroom: 239.6 GB

104

tok/s

Estimated

Weights

4.20 GB

KV cache

3.50 GB

Activations

0.22 GB

Runtime

0.50 GB

Model details →

#5Codestral Mamba 7B

mistral

Commercial OK

Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 8.4 GBHeadroom: 239.6 GB

104

tok/s

Estimated

Weights

4.20 GB

KV cache

3.50 GB

Activations

0.22 GB

Runtime

0.50 GB

Model details →

#6Gemma 4 E4B (Effective 4B)

gemma

Commercial OK

Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 7.1 GBHeadroom: 240.9 GB

ollama run gemma4:e4b

104

tok/s

Estimated

Weights

4.40 GB

KV cache

2.00 GB

Activations

0.23 GB

Runtime

0.50 GB

Model details →

#7Command R7B (12-2024)

command-r

Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 9.1 GBHeadroom: 238.9 GB

tok/s

Estimated

Weights

4.40 GB

KV cache

4.00 GB

Activations

0.23 GB

Runtime

0.50 GB

Model details →

#8Ministral 8B Instruct

mistral

Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 9.8 GBHeadroom: 238.2 GB

tok/s

Estimated

Weights

5.00 GB

KV cache

4.00 GB

Activations

0.26 GB

Runtime

0.50 GB

Model details →

#9Jamba 1.5 Mini

52B

other

Commercial OK

Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 58.0 GBHeadroom: 190.0 GB

tok/s

Estimated

Weights

30.00 GB

KV cache

26.00 GB

Activations

1.51 GB

Runtime

0.50 GB

Model details →

#10Qwen 2.5 7B Instruct

qwen

Commercial OK

Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 9.5 GBHeadroom: 238.5 GB

ollama run qwen2.5:7b

tok/s

Estimated

Weights

8.10 GB

KV cache

0.47 GB

Activations

0.41 GB

Runtime

0.50 GB

Model details →

#11Qwen 3 8B

qwen

Commercial OK

Quant: Q8_0Context: 8,192VRAM: 13.1 GBHeadroom: 234.9 GB

ollama run qwen3:8b

tok/s

Estimated

Weights

8.20 GB

KV cache

4.00 GB

Activations

0.42 GB

Runtime

0.50 GB

Model details →

#12InternLM 2.5 7B Chat

internlm

Commercial OK

Quant: Q4_K_MContext: 8,192VRAM: 8.6 GBHeadroom: 239.4 GB

104

tok/s

Estimated

Weights

4.40 GB

KV cache

3.50 GB

Activations

0.23 GB

Runtime

0.50 GB

Model details →

What if you upgraded?

Hypothetical scenarios. We re-ran the compatibility engine for each.

Move up an Apple memory tier

~$200–400 over base

On Apple Silicon, more unified memory is the only path forward — VRAM and system RAM are the same pool.

Shop this upgrade↗

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Won't run
top 5 popular models

Need more memory than you have. Shown for orientation.

DeepSeek V4 Pro (1.6T MoE)

1600B

deepseek

Commercial OK

Needs ~1024 GB unified memory minimum at smallest quant; you have 248 GB available after OS overhead.

—

Qwen 3.5 235B-A17B (MoE)

397B

qwen

Commercial OK

Needs ~256 GB unified memory minimum at smallest quant; you have 248 GB available after OS overhead.

—

DeepSeek R1 (671B reasoning)

671B

deepseek

Commercial OK

Needs ~420 GB unified memory minimum at smallest quant; you have 248 GB available after OS overhead.

—

GLM-5.2

753B

glm

Commercial OK

Needs ~528 GB unified memory minimum at smallest quant; you have 248 GB available after OS overhead.

—

Mistral Medium 3.5 (675B MoE)

675B

mistral

Needs ~448 GB unified memory minimum at smallest quant; you have 248 GB available after OS overhead.

—

How to read these numbers

Measured here

Measured here - RunLocalAI ran this exact combo on owner hardware with public evidence.

Source-backed

Source-backed / community - a reproduced public source supports the speed, but it is not labeled as owner-measured.

Extrapolated

Extrapolated - predicted from a measured benchmark on similar-bandwidth hardware.

Estimated

Estimated - formula based on VRAM bandwidth and model architecture; not a benchmark row.

RunLocalAI Will-It-Run Framework →

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Runs comfortably238 models

What if you upgraded?

Move up an Apple memory tier

Won't runtop 5 popular models

How to read these numbers

Runs comfortably
238 models

Won't run
top 5 popular models