FitMyLLM
▸ APPLE· M1

Apple M1 (16GB)

Running LLMs on the Apple M1 (16GB) — the long read: which models fit at which quantisation, and the settings worth changing. · Or what else $699 buys

USABLE MEMORY
10.7 GB
ENTRY-LEVEL
BANDWIDTH
68.25
GB/S
MODELS Q4
233/449
52%
7B Q4 SPEED
~9
USABLE
▸ MODEL COVERAGE @ Q452% OF ALL
▸ ESTIMATED SPEED· BY MODEL SIZE @ Q4

Average speeds at Q4 quantization. Actual performance varies by model architecture and context length.

3B
~20
TOK/S
7B
~9
TOK/S
14B
~4
TOK/S
32B
—
18.0GB NEEDED
70B
—
39.4GB NEEDED
▸ MEASURED RIG REPORTS

We rent the machine and time every model on it: decode, VRAM peak, concurrency, watts and cost per million tokens. Yours may already be one of them — and two are free to read in full.

SEE THE REPORTS →
▸ SPECIFICATIONS
USABLE MEMORY
10.7 GB of 16
BANDWIDTH
68.25 GB/s
FP16 COMPUTE
5.2 TFLOPS
TDP
20W
MEMORY
LPDDR4X
ARCHITECTURE
M1
MSRP
$699
57
FAST MODELS · >30 TOK/S
Real-time chat speed
115
USABLE · >10 TOK/S
Comfortable for all tasks
233
TOTAL COMPATIBLE
Fit in usable memory at Q4
▸ DON’T WANT TO BUY?

Test M1 (16GB) (or anything bigger) without committing. Pay by the second, cancel anytime.

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▸ COMPATIBLE MODELS· 233
S
Falcon-H1R Tiny 90M0.09B
FALCON·256K CTX· CHAT· REASONING
674
TOK/S · 5% MEM
›
S
SmolLM2 135M0.135B
SMOLLM·2K CTX· CHAT
449
TOK/S · 5% MEM
›
S
nomic-embed-text-v1.5 100M0.14B
EMBEDDING·8K CTX· CHAT
433
TOK/S · 5% MEM
›
S
GPT-2 124M0.14B
GPT2·1K CTX· CHAT
433
TOK/S · 5% MEM
›
S
SmolVLM 256M0.256B
SMOLLM·8K CTX· CHAT· VISION
237
TOK/S · 6% MEM
›
S
Gemma 3 270M0.27B
GEMMA·32K CTX· CHAT
225
TOK/S · 6% MEM
›
S
Snowflake Arctic Embed M v2.00.305B
EMBEDDING·8K CTX· EMBEDDING· MULTILINGUAL
199
TOK/S · 6% MEM
›
S
bge-large-en-v1.5 335M0.335B
EMBEDDING·1K CTX· CHAT
181
TOK/S · 7% MEM
›
S
mxbai-embed-large-v10.335B
EMBEDDING·1K CTX· EMBEDDING
181
TOK/S · 7% MEM
›
S
Snowflake Arctic Embed L0.335B
EMBEDDING·1K CTX· EMBEDDING
181
TOK/S · 7% MEM
›
S
LFM2 350M0.35B
LFM·125K CTX· CHAT· TOOL_USE
173
TOK/S · 7% MEM
›
S
SmolLM2 360M0.36B
SMOLLM·8K CTX· CHAT
169
TOK/S · 7% MEM
›
S
GPT-2 Medium 345M0.38B
GPT2·1K CTX· CHAT
160
TOK/S · 7% MEM
›
S
Qwen 2.5 0.5B0.5B
QWEN·32K CTX· CHAT
121
TOK/S · 7% MEM
›
S
SmolVLM 500M0.5B
SMOLLM·8K CTX· CHAT· VISION
121
TOK/S · 7% MEM
›
S
Falcon-H1 0.5B0.52B
FALCON·128K CTX· CHAT
117
TOK/S · 8% MEM
›
S
BGE-M30.568B
EMBEDDING·8K CTX· EMBEDDING
107
TOK/S · 8% MEM
›
S
Snowflake Arctic Embed L v2.00.568B
EMBEDDING·8K CTX· EMBEDDING· MULTILINGUAL
107
TOK/S · 8% MEM
›
S
Qwen3-Embedding 0.6B0.6B
EMBEDDING·32K CTX· EMBEDDING· MULTILINGUAL
101
TOK/S · 8% MEM
›
S
Falcon-H1R Tiny 0.6B0.6B
FALCON·32K CTX· CHAT· REASONING
101
TOK/S · 8% MEM
›
S
Falcon Perception 0.6B0.6B
FALCON·4K CTX· VISION
101
TOK/S · 8% MEM
›
S
Qwen 1.5 0.5B0.62B
QWEN·32K CTX· CHAT
98
TOK/S · 8% MEM
›
S
LFM2 700M0.74B
LFM·125K CTX· CHAT· TOOL_USE
82
TOK/S · 9% MEM
›
S
Qwen3 0.6B0.75B
QWEN·32K CTX· CHAT· REASONING
81
TOK/S · 9% MEM
›
S
GPT-2 Large 774M0.81B
GPT2·1K CTX· CHAT
75
TOK/S · 9% MEM
›
S
Qwen 3.5 0.8B0.87B
QWEN·256K CTX· CHAT· CODING· MULTILINGUAL
70
TOK/S · 10% MEM
›
S
InternVL3 1B0.94B
OTHER·32K CTX· CHAT· VISION
65
TOK/S · 10% MEM
›
A
MiniCPM5 1B1.08B
MINICPM·128K CTX· CHAT· REASONING· MULTILINGUAL
56
TOK/S · 11% MEM
›
A
TinyLlama 1.1B1.1B
LLAMA·2K CTX· CHAT
55
TOK/S · 11% MEM
›
A
LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking1.2B
LFM·122K CTX· CHAT· REASONING· TOOL_USE
51
TOK/S · 11% MEM
›
A
Llama-3.2-1B1.2B
LLAMA·4K CTX· CHAT
51
TOK/S · 11% MEM
›
A
LFM2 1.2B1.2B
LFM·125K CTX· CHAT· TOOL_USE· MULTILINGUAL
51
TOK/S · 11% MEM
›
A
Zamba2 1.2B1.2B
OTHER·4K CTX· CHAT
51
TOK/S · 11% MEM
›
A
EXAONE-4.0-1.2B1.3B
EXAONE·64K CTX· CHAT
47
TOK/S · 12% MEM
›
A
OPT 1.3B1.3B
OPT·2K CTX· CHAT
47
TOK/S · 12% MEM
›
A
MiniCPM-V 4.61.3B
OTHER·256K CTX· CHAT· VISION
47
TOK/S · 12% MEM
›
A
DeepSeek Coder 1.3B1.35B
DEEPSEEK·16K CTX· CODING
45
TOK/S · 12% MEM
›
A
Phi-1 1.3B1.42B
PHI·2K CTX· CODING
43
TOK/S · 13% MEM
›
A
Phi-1.5 1.3B1.42B
PHI·2K CTX· CHAT· CODING
43
TOK/S · 13% MEM
›
A
LFM2 8B A1B8.3BMoE
LFM·125K CTX· CHAT· TOOL_USE· MULTILINGUAL
40
TOK/S · 52% MEM
›
▸ NEXT STEP

Get personalized recommendations.

See ranked models with benchmark scores, run commands, and precise speed estimates for your Apple M1 (16GB).

WHAT THIS CARD IS WORTH

M1 (16GB) holds 233 of the models in our catalogue and is, in practice, a IQ4_XS card — the largest it takes is Phi-3-medium-14b at IQ4_XS.

TOKENS/SEC PER $100
1.6
8B at Q4_K_M, so cards compare like for like
USABLE MEMORY PER $100
1.53 GB
what memory costs on this card
THE BIGGEST IT TAKES
Phi-3-medium-14b14B · IQ4_XS9.4 GB7 tok/sEST
Ministral 3 14B Reasoning13.95B · IQ4_XS9.3 GB7 tok/sEST
Mistral-Nemo 12.2B12.2B · Q4_K_M9.0 GB7 tok/sEST
Dolly v2 12B12B · Q4_K_M9.1 GB7 tok/sEST
StableLM 2 12B12B · Q4_K_M9.0 GB7 tok/sEST
Falcon2 11B11B · Q5_K_S9.5 GB7 tok/sEST
Llama-3.2-11B-Vision-Instruct11B · Q4_K_S9.4 GB8 tok/sEST
SOLAR-10.7B10.7B · Q5_K_M9.3 GB7 tok/sEST
AGAINST CARDS OF SIMILAR MEMORY
M3 Pro (18GB)12 GB$1,5991.5 tok/s per $100
M1 Pro (16GB)11 GB$9992.9 tok/s per $100
M2 Pro (16GB)11 GB$1,2992.2 tok/s per $100
M4 (16GB)11 GB$4994.0 tok/s per $100
M1 (16GB)11 GB$6991.6 tok/s per $100

Neighbours in memory rather than in price: memory decides whether a card can do the job at all, so two cards of the same size at different prices is the comparison you are making. Ordered by memory, then bandwidth — not by the value column, which is worked out from bandwidth and price alone and therefore rewards a cheap card whatever its software stack does to that bandwidth in practice. Read it as one input, not as a ranking.

▸ DEVICE UNDER TEST

Apple M1 (16GB) — 16 GB unified, 10.7 GB usable.

▸ APPLE M1 (16GB) SPEC
BRAND
Apple
UNIFIED MEMORY
16 GB
USABLE BY A MODEL
10.7 GB
BANDWIDTH
68.25 GB/s
FP16 COMPUTE
5.2 TFLOPS
FP32 COMPUTE
2.6 TFLOPS
TDP
20 W
ARCHITECTURE
M1
MSRP
$699
▸ AI CAPABILITY
233/ 449 models @ Q4

With 10.7 GB of its 16 GB reaching a model and 68.25 GB/s bandwidth, this machine handles models up to 13B parameters.

Speed ≈ bandwidth / model_size × efficiency. A 7B model at Q4 runs at ~8 tok/s.

RENT IT — LIVE PRICES
Checking what the clouds are charging…
§ 01TOP MODELS FOR APPLE M1 (16GB)
233 FIT · SHOWING 20
MODELSIZEVRAM Q4TOK/SAVG
Baichuan2 13B13B8.4 GB523.6
Llama 2 13B13B8.4 GB517.2
CodeLlama 13B13B8.4 GB519.7
Vicuna 13B13B8.4 GB511.8
LLaMA 1 13B13B8.4 GB532.9
OPT 13B13B8.4 GB535.8
Orca 2 13B13B8.4 GB525.4
WizardCoder Python 13B13B8.4 GB560.1
WizardLM 13B13B8.4 GB519.5
Mistral-Nemo 12.2B12.2B7.9 GB522.4
Dolly v2 12B12B7.8 GB56.4
StableLM 2 12B12B7.8 GB521.3
Falcon2 11B11B7.2 GB633.2
SOLAR-10.7B10.7B7.0 GB628.2
Falcon3-10B10.3B6.8 GB638.2
GLM-4.1V 9B Thinking10.29B6.8 GB6—
Bamba 9B v29.78B6.5 GB626.1
Qwen 3.5 9B9.65B6.4 GB650.6
RecurrentGemma 9B9.63B6.4 GB635.0
glm-4-9b9.4B6.2 GB620.5