Canonical Rankings

Best Macs for this model

Mistral Small 4 119B ranked across the Mac lineup at the best practical quantization, using the best available runtime evidence. Model picker is focused on current-market choices.

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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	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 256GB	374	8bit	42.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 42.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	140.2 GB	193k	Estimated	$7,499	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 42.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 140.2 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
2	Mac Pro M2 Ultra 192GB	310	8bit	42.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 8bit · 42.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	76.2 GB	94k	Estimated	$6,999	8bit is the current best practical quantization. 42.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 76.2 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
3	Mac Studio M4 Max 128GB	260	Q6_K	42.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: Q6_K · 42.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	32.1 GB	32k	Estimated	$4,499	Q6_K is the current best practical quantization. 42.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 32.1 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
4	MacBook Pro M5 Max 128GB 16-inch	260	Q6_K	42.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: Q6_K · 42.0 tok/s · Ollama · Estimated	Ollama	Fits	32.1 GB	32k	Estimated	$5,399	Q6_K is the current best practical quantization. 42.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 32.1 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
5	MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB 16-inch	260	Q6_K	42.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: Q6_K · 42.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	32.1 GB	32k	Estimated	$5,999	Q6_K is the current best practical quantization. 42.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 32.1 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
6	Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB	244	5bit	42.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 5bit · 42.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	21.7 GB	22k	Estimated	$3,999	5bit is the current best practical quantization. 42.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 21.7 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
7	Mac Studio M4 Max 64GB	209	3bit	42.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 3bit · 42.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	17.4 GB	22k	Estimated	$2,999	3bit is the current best practical quantization. 42.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 17.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
8	MacBook Pro M4 Max 64GB 16-inch	209	3bit	42.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: 3bit · 42.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	17.4 GB	22k	Estimated	$4,499	3bit is the current best practical quantization. 42.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 17.4 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
9	Mac Mini M4 Pro 48GB	206	IQ2_K_S	42.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: IQ2_K_S · 42.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	13.9 GB	20k	Estimated	$1,599	IQ2_K_S is the current best practical quantization. 42.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 13.9 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
10	MacBook Pro M4 Pro 48GB 14-inch	206	IQ2_K_S	42.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: IQ2_K_S · 42.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	13.9 GB	20k	Estimated	$2,499	IQ2_K_S is the current best practical quantization. 42.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 13.9 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
11	Mac Studio M4 Max 48GB	206	IQ2_K_S	42.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: IQ2_K_S · 42.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	13.9 GB	20k	Estimated	$2,499	IQ2_K_S is the current best practical quantization. 42.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 13.9 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
12	MacBook Pro M4 Pro 48GB 16-inch	206	IQ2_K_S	42.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: IQ2_K_S · 42.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	13.9 GB	20k	Estimated	$2,999	IQ2_K_S is the current best practical quantization. 42.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 13.9 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
13	MacBook Pro M4 Max 48GB 14-inch	206	IQ2_K_S	42.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: IQ2_K_S · 42.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	13.9 GB	20k	Estimated	$3,499	IQ2_K_S is the current best practical quantization. 42.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 13.9 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
14	MacBook Pro M4 Max 48GB 16-inch	206	IQ2_K_S	42.0 tok/s Fastest evidence path: IQ2_K_S · 42.0 tok/s · MLX · Estimated	MLX	Fits	13.9 GB	20k	Estimated	$3,999	IQ2_K_S is the current best practical quantization. 42.0 tok/s is estimated from nearby benchmark coverage. 13.9 GB headroom remains at this quantization.
15	Mac Mini M4 16GB	0	F32	—	MLX	No	-432.3 GB	—	Estimated	$499	Mistral Small 4 119B does not fit on Mac Mini M4 16GB at the current practical quantization.
16	Mac Mini M4 24GB	0	F32	—	MLX	No	-424.3 GB	—	Estimated	$599	Mistral Small 4 119B does not fit on Mac Mini M4 24GB at the current practical quantization.
17	Mac Mini M4 32GB	0	F32	—	MLX	No	-416.3 GB	—	Estimated	$799	Mistral Small 4 119B does not fit on Mac Mini M4 32GB at the current practical quantization.
18	MacBook Air M4 16GB 13-inch	0	F32	—	MLX	No	-432.3 GB	—	Estimated	$1,099	Mistral Small 4 119B does not fit on MacBook Air M4 16GB 13-inch at the current practical quantization.
19	MacBook Air M4 24GB 13-inch	0	F32	—	MLX	No	-424.3 GB	—	Estimated	$1,299	Mistral Small 4 119B does not fit on MacBook Air M4 24GB 13-inch at the current practical quantization.
20	MacBook Air M4 16GB 15-inch	0	F32	—	MLX	No	-432.3 GB	—	Estimated	$1,299	Mistral Small 4 119B does not fit on MacBook Air M4 16GB 15-inch at the current practical quantization.
21	Mac Mini M4 Pro 24GB	0	F32	—	MLX	No	-424.3 GB	—	Estimated	$1,399	Mistral Small 4 119B does not fit on Mac Mini M4 Pro 24GB at the current practical quantization.
22	MacBook Air M4 32GB 13-inch	0	F32	—	MLX	No	-416.3 GB	—	Estimated	$1,499	Mistral Small 4 119B does not fit on MacBook Air M4 32GB 13-inch at the current practical quantization.
23	MacBook Air M4 24GB 15-inch	0	F32	—	MLX	No	-424.3 GB	—	Estimated	$1,499	Mistral Small 4 119B does not fit on MacBook Air M4 24GB 15-inch at the current practical quantization.
24	MacBook Air M4 32GB 15-inch	0	F32	—	MLX	No	-416.3 GB	—	Estimated	$1,699	Mistral Small 4 119B does not fit on MacBook Air M4 32GB 15-inch at the current practical quantization.
25	MacBook Pro M4 Pro 24GB 14-inch	0	F32	—	MLX	No	-424.3 GB	—	Estimated	$1,999	Mistral Small 4 119B does not fit on MacBook Pro M4 Pro 24GB 14-inch at the current practical quantization.
26	Mac Studio M4 Max 36GB	0	F32	—	MLX	No	-412.3 GB	—	Estimated	$1,999	Mistral Small 4 119B does not fit on Mac Studio M4 Max 36GB at the current practical quantization.
27	MacBook Pro M4 Pro 24GB 16-inch	0	F32	—	MLX	No	-424.3 GB	—	Estimated	$2,499	Mistral Small 4 119B does not fit on MacBook Pro M4 Pro 24GB 16-inch at the current practical quantization.
28	MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB 14-inch	0	F32	—	MLX	No	-412.3 GB	—	Estimated	$2,999	Mistral Small 4 119B does not fit on MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB 14-inch at the current practical quantization.
29	MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB 16-inch	0	F32	—	MLX	No	-412.3 GB	—	Estimated	$3,499	Mistral Small 4 119B does not fit on MacBook Pro M4 Max 36GB 16-inch at the current practical quantization.

Mistral Small 4 119B — 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

3Benchmark rows

2Chip tiers covered

45.0Fastest avg tok/s (M4 Ultra (192 GB))

—Minimum RAM observed

Quick take

Fastest published result is 45.0 tok/s on M4 Ultra (192 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 3 external benchmarks; no lab runs yet.

Published runtimes: MLX, Ollama.

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Catalog record

119BTotal params

6.5BActive params

262,144Context window

2026-03-16Release 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

MoE: 128 experts, 4 active. 119B parameters, with 6.5B activated per token. 256k context length. Multimodal input: Accepts both text and image input, with text output. Instruct and Reasoning functionalities with function calls (reasoning effort configurable per request).

Official source · Raw model card

agentscodingreasoningvisual-understanding

Runtime support mentioned

llama.cppLM StudiovLLMSGLangTransformers

Official specs

Architecture: Mixture of experts.
Total parameters: 119B.
Active parameters: 6.5B.
Experts: 4 active / 128 total.
Context: 256k tokens.
Modalities: Text and image input, text output.

Official takeaways

MoE: 128 experts, 4 active.
Multimodal input: Accepts both text and image input, with text output.
Reasoning Mode: Toggle between fast instant reply mode and reasoning mode, boosting performance with test-time compute when requested.
Vision: Analyzes images and provides insights based on visual content, in addition to text.

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

Field reality on Apple Silicon

Mistral Small 4 119B: 2 Apple Silicon field reports; best reported generation ~44 tok/s; seen on MacBook Pro M5 PRO 64GB; via llama.cpp.

3Benchmark rows

2Field reports

3Practitioner signals

Sparse BenchmarksEvidence status

What practitioners keep saying

The HomeSec-Bench page reports Mistral-Small-4-119B UD-IQ1_M on a MacBook Pro M5 Pro 64GB with llama.cpp at about 44 tok/s generation and about 0.997s TTFT.
The same domain benchmark says the UD-IQ1_M run passed 79 of 96 tests for an 82.3% score, so the speed result should be treated as a quantization tradeoff rather than a quality-equivalent result.
The HomeSec-Bench page reports Mistral-Small-4-119B Q2_K_XL on a MacBook Pro M5 Pro 64GB with llama.cpp at about 43.1 tok/s generation and about 1.0s TTFT.

Apple Silicon field sources

SharpAI HomeSec-Bench
2026-03-26 · MacBook Pro M5 Pro 64GB · llama.cpp
The lower-bit Mistral Small 4 HomeSec-Bench row is fast on an M5 Pro 64GB laptop, but its domain score trails the stronger Q2_K_XL row from the same source.

Runtime/source notes to verify

Mistralai Hugging Face model cards
2026-03-16 · vLLM / llama.cpp / LM Studio / SGLang / Transformers / MLX
The official Mistral Small 4 card lists multiple local-serving paths, including llama.cpp and LM Studio, while recommending the Mistral API if local serving is subpar; that makes runtime choice a first-party reproduction question rather than a solved Apple Silicon benchmark.

Runtime mentions in the field

llama.cppLM StudioMLXOllama

Hardware mentioned in reports

64GBMacBookMacBook Pro

What would improve confidence

Reproduce Field Performance Signal
Upgrade To First Party Measurement

Current published coverage

Published chip coverage includes M4 Ultra (192 GB), M5 Max (128 GB). Fastest published row is 45.0 tok/s on M4 Ultra (192 GB) at Q4_K - Medium.

M4 Ultra (192 GB)M5 Max (128 GB)

Raw benchmark rows for Mistral Small 4 119B

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
M4 Ultra (192 GB)	Q4_K - Medium	—	—	45.0 tok/s	—	MLX	ref
M5 Max (128 GB)	Q4_K - Medium	—	—	42.0 tok/s	—	MLX	ref
M5 Max (128 GB)	Q4_K - Medium	—	—	38.0 tok/s	—	Ollama	ref

Best Macs for Mistral Small 4 119B

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 — 42.0 tok/s

Chips with published results for Mistral Small 4 119B

M4 Ultra (192 GB)M5 Max (128 GB)

Data

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

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