M3 (16 GB) — benchmark record
M3 (16 GB) local LLM benchmarks on Apple Silicon Mac with 9 published rows across 9 models. Peak published speed is 95.0 tok/s on Phi-4 Mini Instruct 3.8B. Published runtimes include LM Studio, MLX, Ollama.
Quick take
Best published speed here is 95.0 tok/s on Phi-4 Mini Instruct 3.8B at Q4_K - Medium. This page is evidence, not the full buying answer.
Based on 9 external benchmarks; no lab runs yet.
Published runtimes: LM Studio, MLX, Ollama.
Current published coverage
Published model coverage includes Phi-4 Mini Instruct 3.8B, Gemma 4 E2B, Gemma 4 E4B, Mistral 7B v0.3 plus 5 more published models. Published runtime coverage on this chip includes LM Studio, MLX, Ollama. Fastest published row is 95.0 tok/s on Phi-4 Mini Instruct 3.8B at Q4_K - Medium.
Raw benchmark rows for M3 (16 GB)
Rows sorted by avg tok/s descending. Click source badge to see original measurement page.
| Model | Quant | Avg tok/s | Runtime | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phi-4 Mini Instruct 3.8B | Q4_K - Medium | 95.0 tok/s | MLX | ref |
| Gemma 4 E2B | Q4_K - Medium | 82.0 tok/s | Ollama | ref |
| Gemma 4 E4B | Q4_K - Medium | 62.0 tok/s | Ollama | ref |
| Mistral 7B v0.3 | Q4_K - Medium | 62.0 tok/s | Ollama | ref |
| Qwen3.5-9B | Q4_K - Medium | 58.0 tok/s | Ollama | ref |
| Ministral 3 8B | Q4_K - Medium | 55.0 tok/s | LM Studio | ref |
| Gemma 3 12B | Q4_K - Medium | 38.0 tok/s | Ollama | ref |
| Qwen 3 14B | Q4_K - Medium | 30.0 tok/s | Ollama | ref |
| Ministral 3 14B | Q4_K - Medium | 30.0 tok/s | LM Studio | ref |
Models tested on this chip
Next step
Use Rankings when you need the best overall answer for a Mac, and keep this page open when you need the evidence behind that recommendation.
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Data
benchmarks.json — full dataset · chips.json — chip summaries · benchmarks.csv — CSV export
Data from in-house lab measurements plus community-published benchmarks. See all chip families →