Phi-4-mini on Apple M3 Pro · 18GB

✅ Runs comfortably — Phi-4-mini 3.8B @ Q8_0
Phi-4-mini 3.8B at Q8_0 needs ~5.3 GB (weights 3.8 GB + KV 1.0 GB + overhead 512 MB @ 8K ctx) of your 9.1 GB usable (of 18.0 GB unified memory) — plenty of headroom. Expect ~17–30 tok/s (fast).
context @ Q8_0: comfortable to 16K · runs to 64K · won't fit past that on this rig
quantneedsspeed
✓ Q8_05.3 GB~17–30 tok/s (fast)
✓ Q5_K_M4.0 GB~25–40 tok/s (fast)
✓ Q4_K_M3.7 GB~25–45 tok/s (fast)
$runlocal install phi4-mini:3.8b
runlocal verdict card
download card share on x share on reddit drop it in your model-drop post
Phi-4-mini: Runs comfortably
for your own README — links back here

Same model, other machines: Apple M1 · Apple M1 Pro · Apple M2 · Apple M2 Pro · Apple M4 Pro · Apple M3 Max

Also runs on a Apple M3 Pro: DeepSeek-R1 (distill) · Qwen2.5 · Mistral 7B · Qwen3 · Llama 3.1

Best models for a Apple M3 Pro · 18GB →

Architecturally similar

These share Phi-4-mini's KV-cache geometry — they size memory the same way, so here's how they fit on a Apple M3 Pro · 18GB too:

modelsharesverdict here
Qwen2.5-Coder 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs (tight)
Llama 3.2 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs comfortably
Llama 3.3 8kv/128hd ❌ Won't fit
Mistral Small 3 8kv/128hd 🐢 CPU-only (slow)
Mistral Nemo 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs (tight)
Codestral 8kv/128hd 🐢 CPU-only (slow)
Llama 3.2 Vision 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs (tight)
Mixtral 8x7B 8kv/128hd ❌ Won't fit

…and 6 more — see the Phi-4-mini page.

Check any combo yourself: open the checker →