Best Local Chat Models by VRAM Tier (October 2026)
Open-weight chat LLMs by VRAM tier: Qwen3.5, Qwen3.6, Gemma 4 and gpt-oss picks, with Ollama tag sizes and licences.
Tag
#vram-tier-guide
Best Local Vision Models by VRAM (October 2026)
Open-weight vision-language models sized by VRAM: Qwen3-VL 2B to 235B-A22B, Mistral Small 3.2, Gemma 3, Pixtral, and where each tier breaks.
Best Local Coding Models by VRAM (September 2026)
Open-weight coding LLMs sized by VRAM: Qwen2.5-Coder, Qwen3-Coder, Devstral Small 2, KAT-Coder, GLM-4.7-Flash, and the trade-offs at each tier.
6GB VRAM: What You Can Actually Run Locally (2026)
Local AI on a 6GB GPU: GTX 1660, RTX 2060, RTX 3050 and laptop cards. Real weight sizes for chat, coding, vision, speech, translation and RAG.
Best Local AI Agent Models: Tool Use by GPU Tier (August 2026)
Which local models can actually use tools, call functions, and run multi-step workflows? Function-calling and TAU-bench picks from 8GB to 32GB VRAM.
Best Local Speech Models by VRAM Tier (August 2026)
Local TTS and STT by VRAM tier: Parakeet, Canary, MOSS-Transcribe-Diarize, Step-Audio-EditX, Fish Audio S2 Pro and Kokoro, and the licence each ships.
Best Local Coding Models by VRAM Tier (August 2026)
Which open-weight coding model to run locally? HumanEval and SWE-bench picks from 8GB to 32GB GPUs. Qwen2.5-Coder, Qwen3.6, Devstral, KAT-Coder.
Best Local Models for Translation: Every VRAM Tier (August 2026)
TranslateGemma, NLLB-200, Aya Expanse and Qwen3.5 by VRAM tier, with the licence terms that decide whether you can ship what you run.
Best Local Chat Models by VRAM Tier (August 2026)
Head-to-head comparison of local chat and assistant models from 8GB to 32GB VRAM. Current picks: Qwen3.5, Gemma 4, GPT-OSS, Qwen3.6, and GLM-4.7-Flash.
Best Local Vision Models: Every GPU Tier (August 2026)
Local image analysis, OCR, and visual reasoning from 8GB to 32GB VRAM. Qwen3.5 replaces Qwen3-VL at most tiers, and 16GB stays unresolved.
12GB VRAM: Every AI Task You Can Run Locally (August 2026)
Local AI on a 12GB GPU: chat, coding, vision, speech and agents for RTX 3060 12GB or RTX 4070. Current picks, per-quant weight sizes, honest limits.
16GB VRAM: Every AI Task You Can Run Locally (August 2026)
Local AI on a 16GB GPU: chat, coding, translation, speech and agents for RTX 4060 Ti, RTX 5060 or Arc A770, and why the vision tier stays unresolved.
24GB VRAM: Every AI Task You Can Run Locally (August 2026)
Local AI on a 24GB GPU: chat, coding, vision, speech and agents for RTX 3090 or RTX 4090. Current picks, per-quant weight sizes, and an open runtime bug.
32GB VRAM: Every AI Task You Can Run Locally (August 2026)
Local AI on a 32GB GPU: chat, coding, vision, speech and agents on an RTX 5090. Current picks, per-quant weight sizes, and what the headroom buys.
8GB VRAM: Every AI Task You Can Run Locally (August 2026)
Local AI on an 8GB GPU: chat, coding, vision, speech and agents for RTX 4060 or RTX 3070. Current picks, named quantisations, honest limits.