Best local AI for Apple M2 Pro · 32GB

The best local AI on a Apple M2 Pro · 32GB right now is DeepSeek-R1 (distill) (14B @ Q3_K_M, ~15–25 tok/s). Full ranking below — capability × real speed on this hardware, never sponsored.

#modelbest fitverdictspeed
1 DeepSeek-R1 (distill) 14B Q3_K_M ✅ Runs comfortably 15–25 tok/s
2 Qwen2.5 14B Q3_K_M ✅ Runs comfortably 15–25 tok/s
3 Qwen3 14B Q3_K_M ✅ Runs comfortably 15–25 tok/s
4 Gemma 3 12B Q3_K_M ✅ Runs comfortably 18–30 tok/s
5 Mistral Small 3 24B Q3_K_M ✅ Runs comfortably 10–16 tok/s
6 Llama 3.1 8B Q6_K ✅ Runs comfortably 17–30 tok/s
7 Phi-4 14B Q3_K_M ✅ Runs comfortably 15–25 tok/s
8 Mistral Nemo 12B Q4_K_M ✅ Runs comfortably 15–25 tok/s
9 Gemma 4 12B Q6_K ✅ Runs comfortably 11–18 tok/s
10 Mistral 7B 7B Q6_K ✅ Runs comfortably 19–30 tok/s
11 Gemma 2 9B Q5_K_M ✅ Runs comfortably 17–30 tok/s
12 Llama 3.2 3B Q5_K_M ✅ Runs comfortably 45–80 tok/s
$npx runlocal-sh install deepseek-r1

Rankings use the same GQA-aware fit + bandwidth-calibrated speed math as the CLI — no sponsorships, no affiliate re-sorting, ever.

Different machine? Apple M1 · 8GB · Apple M1 Pro · 16GB · Apple M2 · 16GB · Apple M3 Pro · 18GB · Apple M4 Pro · 48GB · Apple M3 Max · 36GB

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