YOUR MEMORY BUDGET

Local AI models for 16GB VRAM.

Explore models by theoretical weight storage. This shortlist covers available downloadable language models with a known or name-derived parameter count.

14 GBleft for weights at 4-bit
16 GB budget − 2 GB reserve

The reserve is your assumption, not a measured overhead allowance. The default 2 GB may be too little for your runtime or context length. Results are not confirmed fits and have no verified speed rating. Weight estimates use decimal GB and do not include quantization overhead. For timed results on one 12GB machine, see measured speeds.

1,031 models within the weight budget

Largest parameter count first · not a quality ranking

inclusionAI · Downloadable

DR-Venus-4B-RL

Text generation

Generates text, according to its published model architecture (Qwen3ForCausalLM). No task is listed on Hugging Face, so check the model card for intended use.

Source listed
Apr 21, 2026
Parameters
4B
4-bit weights only
≈ 2 GB
License
Not disclosed
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inclusionAI · Downloadable

DR-Venus-4B-SFT

Text generation

Generates text, according to its published model architecture (Qwen3ForCausalLM). No task is listed on Hugging Face, so check the model card for intended use.

Source listed
Apr 21, 2026
Parameters
4B
4-bit weights only
≈ 2 GB
License
Not disclosed
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inclusionAI · Downloadable

VISTA-4B

VisionReinforcement learning

Understands text and images and responds in text.

Source listed
Jun 12, 2026
Parameters
4B
4-bit weights only
≈ 2 GB
License
apache-2.0
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inclusionAI · Downloadable

ZwZ-4B

Vision

Understands text and images and responds in text.

Source listed
Feb 12, 2026
Parameters
4B
4-bit weights only
≈ 2 GB
License
apache-2.0
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JetBrains · Downloadable

Mellum-4b-base

Text generation

Generates text for conversations and writing.

Source listed
Apr 28, 2025
Parameters
4B
4-bit weights only
≈ 2 GB
License
apache-2.0
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LightOn · Downloadable

LightOnOCR-3-4B

VisionDocument reading

Understands text and images and responds in text.

Source listed
Oct 6, 2026
Parameters
4B
4-bit weights only
≈ 2 GB
License
apache-2.0
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Microsoft · Downloadable

Fara1.5-4B

Vision

Understands text and images and responds in text.

Source listed
Jul 17, 2026
Parameters
4B
4-bit weights only
≈ 2 GB
License
mit
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NVIDIA · Downloadable

EGM-4B

VisionReinforcement learning

Understands text and images and responds in text.

Source listed
Apr 2, 2026
Parameters
4B
4-bit weights only
≈ 2 GB
License
apache-2.0
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NVIDIA · Downloadable

EGM-4B-SFT

Vision

Understands text and images and responds in text.

Source listed
Apr 2, 2026
Parameters
4B
4-bit weights only
≈ 2 GB
License
apache-2.0
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OpenBMB · Downloadable

MiniCPM3-4B

Text generation

Generates text for conversations and writing.

Source listed
Sep 3, 2024
Parameters
4B
4-bit weights only
≈ 2 GB
License
apache-2.0
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What changes with a 16GB budget?

With 2 GB set aside, 14 GB remains for weights. At 4-bit that allows up to 28 billion parameters in the theoretical calculation. An 8-billion-parameter model alone needs approximately 4 GB at this precision, before its conversation cache and runtime.

Why might a listed model still fail to load?

Its actual weight format may need more space, the runtime may not support its architecture, or the conversation cache may exceed your reserve. Vision models can also need space for image processing. Check the original model card and measure your exact setup before relying on it.

Read the memory guide and technical sources · Compare two models