YOUR MEMORY BUDGET

Local AI models for 8GB VRAM.

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

6 GBleft for weights at 4-bit
8 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.

852 models within the weight budget

Largest parameter count first · not a quality ranking

Qwen · Alibaba · Downloadable

Qwen3-1.7B

Text generation

Generates text for conversations and writing.

Source listed
Apr 27, 2025
Parameters
1.7B
4-bit weights only
≈ 0.9 GB
License
apache-2.0
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Stability AI · Downloadable

ar-stablelm-2-chat

Text generation

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

Source listed
Aug 6, 2024
Parameters
1.6B
4-bit weights only
≈ 0.8 GB
License
other
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LightOn · Downloadable

pagnol-xl

Text generation

Generates text for conversations and writing.

Source listed
Mar 20, 2024
Parameters
1.6B
4-bit weights only
≈ 0.8 GB
License
mit
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LightOn · Downloadable

mambaoutai

Text generation

Generates text for conversations and writing.

Source listed
Mar 18, 2024
Parameters
1.6B
4-bit weights only
≈ 0.8 GB
License
apache-2.0
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inclusionAI · Downloadable

Ming-Lite-Uni

VisionImage generationImage editing

Understands text and images and responds in text.

Source listed
May 2, 2025
Parameters
1.6B
4-bit weights only
≈ 0.8 GB
License
mit
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Liquid AI · Downloadable

LFM2-VL-1.6B

Vision

Understands text and images and responds in text.

Source listed
Aug 12, 2025
Parameters
1.6B
4-bit weights only
≈ 0.8 GB
License
other
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BAAI · Downloadable

OpenSeek-Small-v1

Text generation

Generates text, according to its published model architecture (DeepseekV3ForCausalLM). No task is listed on Hugging Face, so check the model card for intended use.

Source listed
May 5, 2025
Parameters
1.6B
4-bit weights only
≈ 0.8 GB
License
apache-2.0
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BAAI · Downloadable

OpenSeek-Small-v1-Baseline

Text generation

Generates text, according to its published model architecture (DeepseekV3ForCausalLM). No task is listed on Hugging Face, so check the model card for intended use.

Source listed
May 22, 2025
Parameters
1.6B
4-bit weights only
≈ 0.8 GB
License
Not disclosed
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BAAI · Downloadable

OpenSeek-Small-v1-SFT

Text generation

Generates text, according to its published model architecture (DeepseekV3ForCausalLM). No task is listed on Hugging Face, so check the model card for intended use.

Source listed
Aug 25, 2025
Parameters
1.6B
4-bit weights only
≈ 0.8 GB
License
Not disclosed
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Meta · Downloadable

MobileMoE-M-QAT

Text generation

Generates text for conversations and writing.

Source listed
Jun 11, 2026
Parameters
1.5B
4-bit weights only
≈ 0.7 GB
License
fair-noncommercial-research-license
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What changes with a 8GB budget?

With 2 GB set aside, 6 GB remains for weights. At 4-bit that allows up to 12 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