Canonical Rankings

Best Macs for this model

Gemma 4 E4B ranked across the Mac lineup at the best practical quantization, using the best available runtime evidence. Model picker is focused on current-market choices.

Model

Quantization

Sort

Runtime

29 ranked MacsUse the strongest current runtime evidence for each row.28 historical models hiddenBaselinesStatic paths cover only canonical model pages; sort and quantization stay as query state.

Rank	Mac	Score	Quant	Tok/s	Runtime	Fits	Headroom	Context	Evidence	Price	Why it ranks here
1	MacBook Pro M5 Max 128GB 16-inch	697	8bit	128.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 128.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	119.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$5,399	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 128.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 119.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
2	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 256GB	625	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	247.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$7,499	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 247.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
3	Mac Pro M2 Ultra 192GB	561	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	183.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$6,999	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 183.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
4	Mac Studio M4 Max 128GB	497	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	119.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$4,499	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 119.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
5	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB 16-inch	497	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	119.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$5,999	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 119.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
6	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB	465	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	87.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$3,999	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 87.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
7	Mac Studio M4 Max 64GB	433	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	55.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$2,999	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 55.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
8	MacBook Pro M4 Max 64GB 16-inch	433	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	55.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$4,499	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 55.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
9	Mac Mini M4 Pro 48GB	417	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	39.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$1,599	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 39.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
10	MacBook Pro M4 Pro 48GB 14-inch	417	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	39.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$2,499	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 39.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
11	Mac Studio M4 Max 48GB	417	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	39.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$2,499	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 39.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
12	MacBook Pro M4 Pro 48GB 16-inch	417	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	39.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$2,999	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 39.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
13	MacBook Pro M4 Max 48GB 14-inch	417	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	39.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$3,499	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 39.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
14	MacBook Pro M4 Max 48GB 16-inch	417	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	39.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$3,999	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 39.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
15	Mac Studio M4 Max 36GB	405	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	27.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$1,999	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 27.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
16	MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB 14-inch	405	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	27.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$2,999	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 27.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
17	MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB 16-inch	405	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	27.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$3,499	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 27.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
18	Mac Mini M4 32GB	401	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	23.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$799	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 23.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
19	MacBook Air M4 32GB 13-inch	401	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	23.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$1,499	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 23.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
20	MacBook Air M4 32GB 15-inch	401	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	23.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$1,699	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 23.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
21	Mac Mini M4 24GB	393	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	15.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$599	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 15.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
22	MacBook Air M4 24GB 13-inch	393	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	15.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$1,299	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 15.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
23	Mac Mini M4 Pro 24GB	393	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	15.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$1,399	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 15.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
24	MacBook Air M4 24GB 15-inch	393	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	15.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$1,499	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 15.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
25	MacBook Pro M4 Pro 24GB 14-inch	393	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	15.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$1,999	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 15.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
26	MacBook Pro M4 Pro 24GB 16-inch	393	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	15.4 GB	131k	Estimated	$2,499	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 15.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
27	Mac Mini M4 16GB	385	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	7.4 GB	71k	Estimated	$499	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 7.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
28	MacBook Air M4 16GB 13-inch	385	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	7.4 GB	71k	Estimated	$1,099	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 7.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
29	MacBook Air M4 16GB 15-inch	385	8bit	78.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 78.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	7.4 GB	71k	Estimated	$1,299	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 78.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 7.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.

Gemma 4 E4B — ranking first, raw rows below

Start with the ranked Mac table above. Use the rest of this page to inspect raw Apple Silicon coverage and model metadata.

Quantizations observed: Q4_K - Medium

5Benchmark rows

5Chip tiers covered

128.0Fastest avg tok/s (M5 Max (128 GB))

—Minimum RAM observed

Quick take

Fastest published result is 128.0 tok/s on M5 Max (128 GB) at Q4_K - Medium. Published runtimes include MLX, Ollama. Start with Rankings for the decision, then use the raw rows below to audit the evidence.

Based on 5 external benchmarks; no lab runs yet.

Published runtimes: MLX, Ollama.

Need the best Mac for this model? Use Buy Need a setup-first answer? Use Run Checking whether it fits? Use Fit Browse Macs by exact hardware Need the full audit trail? Use Bench Comparing against rented GPUs? Use AI Datacenter Index

Catalog record

8BTotal params

DenseActive params

131,072Context window

2026-04-02Release date

What this model is, and what Apple Silicon users are actually seeing

Official model cards tell you what the model is for and which software stacks it targets. Field reality below shows how much Apple Silicon evidence we have so far.

Official brief

Gemma is a family of open models built by Google DeepMind. Gemma 4 models are multimodal, handling text and image input (with audio supported on small models) and generating text output. This release includes open-weights models in both pre-trained and instruction-tuned variants.

Official source · Raw model card

agentscodingreasoningvisual-understanding

Runtime support mentioned

llama.cppTransformers

Official specs

Architecture: Dense.
Total parameters: 4.5B effective (8B with embeddings).
Context: 128K tokens.
Sliding window: 512 tokens.
Modalities: Text, Image, Audio.

Official takeaways

Reasoning: All models in the family are designed as highly capable reasoners, with configurable thinking modes.
Extended Multimodalities: Processes Text, Image with variable aspect ratio and resolution support (all models), Video, and Audio (featured natively on the E2B and E4B models).
Diverse & Efficient Architectures: Offers Dense and Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) variants of different sizes for scalable deployment.
Increased Context Window: The small models feature a 128K context window, while the medium models support 256K.

Official model cards describe intent, capabilities, and supported stacks. They do not prove Apple Silicon speed by themselves.

Field reality on Apple Silicon

Gemma 4 E4B: 18 Apple Silicon field reports; best reported generation ~76.8 tok/s; best reported prompt processing ~2852 tok/s; reported RAM use ~4.7-11.2GB; seen on M5 PRO 48GB, M3 MAX 36GB, MacBook Pro M5 PRO 64GB; via oMLX, llama.cpp.

5Benchmark rows

18Field reports

5Practitioner signals

Sparse BenchmarksEvidence status

What practitioners keep saying

The oMLX context table reports gemma-4-E4B-it 4bit on an M3 Max 30-core 36GB Mac at 1024 tokens context with 1547 tok/s prompt processing, 62.1 tok/s generation, 0.662s TTFT, and peak memory at 7.5GB.
The oMLX context table reports gemma-4-E4B-it 4bit on an M3 Max 30-core 36GB Mac at 4096 tokens context with 1538 tok/s prompt processing, 60.0 tok/s generation, 2.663s TTFT, and peak memory at 7.6GB.
The page also includes separate batching results; keep batching separate from single-stream ranking claims until first-party methodology matches it.

Apple Silicon field sources

oMLX community benchmarks
2026-05-05 · M4 16GB · oMLX v0.3.8
A same-day oMLX sweep shows Gemma 4 E4B-oQ6 fitting comfortably on a base M4 16GB Mac through 32k context, improving small-memory setup guidance while preserving reproduction caveats.
oMLX community benchmarks
2026-05-05 · M3 Max 30-core GPU, 36GB unified memory · oMLX
A same-day oMLX row shows Gemma 4 E4B running at roughly 60 tok/s on an M3 Max 36GB setup, adding a useful middle-tier Mac profile between the constrained-memory M4 caution and the higher-end M5 Pro row.
oMLX community benchmarks
2026-04-18 · M5 Pro 48GB · oMLX
Gemma 4 E4B has an oMLX 4-bit M5 Pro 48GB profile with enough throughput to be a current small-model Mac option, especially when users want more quality headroom than E2B.
oMLX community benchmarks
2026-04-12 · M4 16GB · oMLX
A constrained-memory M4 16GB oMLX profile shows Gemma 4 E4B can fit and stay usable at short contexts, but advertised long context should not be treated as interactive without reproduction.
SharpAI HomeSec-Bench
2026-03-26 · MacBook Pro M5 Pro 64GB · llama.cpp
HomeSec-Bench gives Gemma 4 E4B an M5 Pro GGUF row with fast first-token latency and enough task score to matter for small local agents.

Runtime mentions in the field

llama.cppoMLX

Hardware mentioned in reports

16GB48GB64GBM4MacMacBookMacBook Pro

What would improve confidence

Reproduce Field Performance Signal
Upgrade To First Party Measurement

Current published coverage

Published chip coverage includes M5 Max (128 GB), M5 Pro (24 GB), M4 Pro (24 GB), M3 (16 GB), M1 (8 GB). Fastest published row is 128.0 tok/s on M5 Max (128 GB) at Q4_K - Medium.

M5 Max (128 GB)M5 Pro (24 GB)M4 Pro (24 GB)M3 (16 GB)M1 (8 GB)

Related Gemma 4 E4B models with published pages: Gemma 4 26B-A4B · Gemma 4 31B · Gemma 4 E2B

Raw benchmark rows for Gemma 4 E4B

Rows stay below the ranking because this page is answer-first. Use them to inspect exact chips, quantizations, runtimes, and sources.

Chip	Quant	RAM req.	Context	Avg tok/s	Prompt tok/s	Runtime	Source
M5 Max (128 GB)	Q4_K - Medium	—	—	128.0 tok/s	—	MLX	ref
M5 Pro (24 GB)	Q4_K - Medium	—	—	92.0 tok/s	—	Ollama	ref
M4 Pro (24 GB)	Q4_K - Medium	—	—	78.0 tok/s	—	MLX	ref
M3 (16 GB)	Q4_K - Medium	—	—	62.0 tok/s	—	Ollama	ref
M1 (8 GB)	Q4_K - Medium	—	—	42.0 tok/s	—	Ollama	ref

Best Macs for Gemma 4 E4B

Ordered by fastest published tok/s on the chip family in each Mac. Click through for the full machine page.

MacBook Pro M5 Max 128GB 16-inch — 128.0 tok/s Mac Mini M4 Pro 24GB — 78.0 tok/s Mac Mini M4 Pro 48GB — 78.0 tok/s MacBook Pro M4 Pro 24GB 14-inch — 78.0 tok/s MacBook Pro M4 Pro 48GB 14-inch — 78.0 tok/s MacBook Pro M4 Pro 24GB 16-inch — 78.0 tok/s

Chips with published results for Gemma 4 E4B

M5 Max (128 GB)M5 Pro (24 GB)M4 Pro (24 GB)M3 (16 GB)M1 (8 GB)

Data

benchmarks.json — full dataset · models.json — model summaries · benchmarks.csv — CSV export

See all models →