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Can I run Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct-AWQ-4bit on a Mac with 16 GB?

Yes

Its published weights (7.55 GB) fit in the 10.7 GB a Mac with 16 GB can use, with room for ≈ 21K tokens of context.

Full analysis of Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct-AWQ-4bit Everything that runs on Mac with 16 GB Get the weights on Hugging Face
hf download cyankiwi/Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct-AWQ-4bit

Files and context on Mac with 16 GB

Each file of Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct-AWQ-4bit (and of GGUF versions the site has analyzed), and how much context fits next to it, with the context cache in 16-bit or 8-bit.

FileSizeOn Mac with 16 GB Context (16-bit)Context (8-bit)
As published7.55 GBFits21K41K
4-bit (estimate)4.93 GBFits38K76K

Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct-AWQ-4bit on other hardware

Popular models that run on Mac with 16 GB

Assumes 67% of the Mac's memory is usable (macOS's default limit for the GPU; it can be raised) and at least 4K tokens of context for one conversation, with the context cache in 16-bit unless noted. Fits leaves at least 20% of that memory for context; Tight leaves less.