Best local AI models for MacBook Pro M4 Pro (48 GB)
Holds a 32B at Q4_K_M with room for context. Bandwidth, not capacity, is the limit here.
MLX-based training only.
Specification
Unified memory48 GB
Usable for models36 GB
System RAM48 GB
Bandwidth273 GB/s
Local trainingSupported
Operating systemsmacos
Runs well
29 models fit this machine
Estimated
| Model | Params | Quantization | Memory | ~tok/s | Fit | Fine-tune |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen2.5 Coder 32B Instruct | 32.8B | Q4_K_M | 21 GB | 11 | Excellent fit | Yes |
| Qwen2.5 32B Instruct | 32.8B | Q4_K_M | 21 GB | 11 | Excellent fit | Yes |
| DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B | 32.8B | Q4_K_M | 21 GB | 11 | Excellent fit | Yes |
| Mixtral 8x7B Instruct | 46.7B | Q4_K_M | 29 GB | 27 | Good fit | Yes |
| Gemma 3 27B Instruct | 27.4B | Q4_K_M | 21 GB | 13 | Excellent fit | Yes |
| Phi-4 14B | 14.7B | Q8_0 | 17 GB | 14 | Excellent fit | Yes |
| Mistral Small 24B Instruct | 23.6B | Q6_K | 20 GB | 11 | Excellent fit | Yes |
| Qwen2.5 14B Instruct | 14.8B | Q8_0 | 17 GB | 13 | Excellent fit | Yes |
| Qwen3 30B-A3B | 30.5B | Q6_K | 25 GB | 78 | Good fit | Yes |
| StarCoder2 15B | 16B | Q8_0 | 17 GB | 12 | Excellent fit | Yes |
| Qwen3 14B | 14.8B | Q8_0 | 17 GB | 13 | Excellent fit | Yes |
| DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B | 14.8B | Q8_0 | 17 GB | 13 | Excellent fit | Yes |
| Mistral Nemo 12B Instruct | 12.2B | Q8_0 | 14 GB | 16 | Excellent fit | Yes |
| Qwen2.5 Coder 7B Instruct | 7.6B | F16 | 15 GB | 14 | Excellent fit | Yes |
| Gemma 3 12B Instruct | 12.2B | Q8_0 | 16 GB | 16 | Excellent fit | Yes |
| DeepSeek-Coder-V2-Lite Instruct | 15.7B | Q8_0 | 18 GB | 83 | Excellent fit | Yes |
| Gemma 2 9B Instruct | 9.2B | F16 | 20 GB | 11 | Excellent fit | Yes |
| Qwen2.5 7B Instruct | 7.6B | F16 | 15 GB | 14 | Excellent fit | Yes |
Fine-tunable here
Models you can train on this machine
Qwen2.5 Coder 32B Instruct
QLORA · 22 GB peak
Qwen2.5 32B Instruct
QLORA · 22 GB peak
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B
QLORA · 22 GB peak
Mixtral 8x7B Instruct
QLORA · 28 GB peak
Gemma 3 27B Instruct
QLORA · 19 GB peak
Phi-4 14B
QLORA · 12 GB peak
Mistral Small 24B Instruct
QLORA · 17 GB peak
Qwen2.5 14B Instruct
QLORA · 12 GB peak