Phi-4-mini on Apple M3 Max · 36GB

✅ 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 21.1 GB usable (of 36.0 GB unified memory) — plenty of headroom. Expect ~35–60 tok/s (fast).
context @ Q8_0: comfortable to 64K · runs to its full 128K
quantneedsspeed
✓ Q8_05.3 GB~35–60 tok/s (fast)
✓ Q5_K_M4.0 GB~50–85 tok/s (very fast)
✓ Q4_K_M3.7 GB~55–95 tok/s (very 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 M3 Pro · Apple M2 Pro · Apple M4 Pro

Also runs on a Apple M3 Max: Qwen3 · DeepSeek-R1 (distill) · Qwen2.5 · Gemma 4 · Gemma 3

Best models for a Apple M3 Max · 36GB →

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 Max · 36GB too:

modelsharesverdict here
Llama 3.1 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs comfortably
Qwen2.5-Coder 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs (tight)
Llama 3.2 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs comfortably
Llama 3.3 8kv/128hd 🐢 CPU-only (slow)
Mistral 7B 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs comfortably
Mistral Small 3 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs (tight)
Mistral Nemo 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs comfortably
Codestral 8kv/128hd ✅ Runs (tight)

…and 8 more — see the Phi-4-mini page.

Check any combo yourself: open the checker →