What can you run with 16GB of RAM?
With 16GB RAM you can run 17 of the 66 open-source models we track, up to 9.7B parameters, using each model's Q4 file where one is published and otherwise the smallest file that is. The most downloaded that fits is MiniCPM5-2B, needing 2.3 GB.
Typical machines: MacBook Air M5 · Mac mini M6 · Mid-range Windows laptops. We hold back 20% of RAM (2 to 4GB) for the operating system, leaving 14 GB for a model.
16GB RAM decides whether a model loads. How fast it answers depends on your machine's memory bandwidth, which differs between machines with the same amount of memory. Why bandwidth sets the speed →
Models that run on 16GB RAM in 2026
| Model↕ | Size↕ | Memory↑ | Downloads (30 days)↕ |
|---|---|---|---|
| MiniCPM-V-4.7-1BOpenBMB | 1.6B | 1.4 GBRuns well | 184,495 |
| K2-Horizon-0.9BMBZUAI Institute of Foundation Models | 1.1B | 1.4 GBRuns well | 13,425 |
| LFM3-1.7BLiquid AI | 1.7B | 1.8 GBRuns well | 15,885 |
| LFM3-VL-2BLiquid AI | 1.9B | 1.8 GBRuns well | 4,193 |
| MiniCPM5-2BOpenBMB | 2.5B | 2.3 GBRuns well | 1,180,516 |
| d1-3BLiquid AI | 3.1B | 2.5 GBRuns well | 31,374 |
| granite-4.2-3bIBM | 3.7B | 3.1 GBRuns well | 37,116 |
| Mage-VLMicrosoft | 4.7B | 3.9 GBRuns well | 7,645 |
| FrogNano-4B-2609Microsoft | 4.7B | 3.9 GBRuns well | 2,663 |
| K2-Horizon-3.7BMBZUAI Institute of Foundation Models | 5.1B | 4.3 GBRuns well | 24,267 |
| North-Micro-Vision-InstructCohere | 2.5B | 6.0 GBRuns well | 33,984 |
| Ling-3.0-tinyinclusionAI · MoE | 7.9B1.6B active | 6.2 GBRuns well | 13,391 |
| granite-4.2-8bIBM | 8.8B | 6.6 GBRuns well | 70,118 |
| K2-Horizon-7BMBZUAI Institute of Foundation Models | 9B | 6.8 GBRuns well | 87,218 |
| Ornith-1.5-9BDeepReinforce | 9.7B | 6.9 GBRuns well | 462,696 |
| MiMo-V2.6-Distill-Qwen-9BXiaomi | 9.4B | 7.0 GBRuns well | 19,920 |
| granite-switch-4.1-8bIBM | 8.8B | 7.8 GBRuns well | 3,734 |
Sorted by memory, smallest first. Click any column to change it.
Step up to 24GB RAM and 4 more models come within reach
Including Qwen3.8-27B (28B), Muse-Glimmer-30B (30B) and granite-4.2-30b (29B).
See everything 24GB RAM runs →All figures at Q4_K_M quantization and 4K context. “Memory” is the model's download size from Hugging Face, plus its context cache calculated from the model's configuration, plus a runtime allowance of 10% of the model (at least 0.5GB, at most 3GB). How this is calculated
Image generators that also fit
These make pictures rather than text. Their memory use scales with the resolution you generate at, not conversation length, so treat these figures as a floor rather than a ceiling.
What you'd need more memory for
The next models up, and what they ask for.