Home › Best › best LLM for 12GB VRAM The best open LLMs you can run on 12 GB of VRAM Open LLMs calculated to need no more than 12 GB of VRAM at the stated default quant and context — the RTX 3060 12 GB, 4070, or 6700 XT tier. Ranked by popularity within that calculated fit set, with local, rented-GPU, and API cost estimates. Verify the selected build and context on your exact hardware.
How this is ranked: Transparent calculated fit filter. 'Best' means 'estimated to run within a 12 GB VRAM budget at the stated quant and context.' Ordering is by popularity/recognition, not a quality benchmark; exact usage varies by runner and settings.
1. Llama 3.1 8B Instruct — Meta, 8B · ~8.0 GB VRAM · $0.07/1M API · commercial OK2. Qwen2.5 7B Instruct — Alibaba, 7B · ~7.0 GB VRAM · $0.15/1M API · commercial OK3. Qwen3 0.6B — Qwen, 800M · ~3.0 GB VRAM · $0.11/1M API est. · commercial OK4. Mistral 7B Instruct v0.3 — Mistral AI, 7.2B · ~8.0 GB VRAM · $0.20/1M API · commercial OK5. Qwen2.5-Coder 7B Instruct — Alibaba, 7B · ~7.0 GB VRAM · $0.16/1M API est. · commercial OK6. Qwen3 4B — Qwen, 4B · ~5.0 GB VRAM · $0.13/1M API est. · commercial OK7. Qwen2.5 3B Instruct — Qwen, 3.1B · ~4.0 GB VRAM · $0.12/1M API est. · non-commercial8. Gemma 2 9B Instruct — Google, 9B · ~9.0 GB VRAM · $0.06/1M API · commercial OK9. Llama 3.2 3B Instruct — Meta, 3B · ~5.0 GB VRAM · $0.19/1M API · commercial OK10. Qwen2.5 1.5B Instruct — Qwen, 1.5B · ~3.0 GB VRAM · $0.11/1M API est. · commercial OK11. gemma 3 270m — google, 300M · ~2.0 GB VRAM · $0.10/1M API est. · commercial OK12. Qwen3-8B — Alibaba, 8.2B · ~9.0 GB VRAM · $0.29/1M API · commercial OK13. Qwen3 1.7B — Qwen, 2B · ~5.0 GB VRAM · $0.12/1M API est. · commercial OK14. BGE-M3 — BAAI, 567M · ~3.0 GB VRAM · $0.10/1M API est. · commercial OK15. Qwen3 4B Instruct 2507 — Qwen, 4B · ~5.0 GB VRAM · $0.13/1M API est. · commercial OK16. Qwen2.5 0.5B Instruct — Qwen, 500M · ~2.0 GB VRAM · $0.10/1M API est. · commercial OK17. Qwen2 1.5B Instruct — Qwen, 1.5B · ~3.0 GB VRAM · $0.11/1M API est. · commercial OK18. Llama 3.2 1B Instruct — Meta, 1.2B · ~3.0 GB VRAM · $0.11/1M API · commercial OK19. Llama 3.2 1B — meta-llama, 1.2B · ~3.0 GB VRAM · $0.11/1M API est. · commercial OK20. Qwen2.5 0.5B — Qwen, 500M · ~2.0 GB VRAM · $0.10/1M API est. · commercial OK21. Phi-3.5-mini Instruct — Microsoft, 3.8B · ~5.0 GB VRAM · $0.13/1M API est. · commercial OK22. Qwen2-VL 7B Instruct — Alibaba, 8B · ~7.0 GB VRAM · $0.16/1M API est. · commercial OK23. gemma 3 1b it — google, 1B · ~3.0 GB VRAM · $0.11/1M API est. · commercial OK24. TinyLlama 1.1B Chat v1.0 — TinyLlama, 1.1B · ~2.0 GB VRAM · $0.11/1M API est. · commercial OK25. Rio 3.0 Open Mini — prefeitura-rio, 4B · ~5.0 GB VRAM · $0.13/1M API est. · commercial OK26. gpt2 large — openai-community, 800M · ~2.0 GB VRAM · $0.11/1M API est. · commercial OK27. OpenELM 1 1B Instruct — apple, 1.1B · ~3.0 GB VRAM · $0.11/1M API est. · non-commercial28. DeepSeek-Coder-V2-Lite Instruct — DeepSeek, 15.7B · ~11 GB VRAM · $0.23/1M API est. · commercial OK29. Hermes 3 — Llama 3.1 8B — Nous Research, 8B · ~8.0 GB VRAM · $0.16/1M API est. · commercial OK30. PowerMoE 3b — ibm-research, 3.4B · ~4.0 GB VRAM · $0.13/1M API est. · commercial OK31. Meta Llama 3 8B Instruct — meta-llama, 8B · ~10 GB VRAM · $0.16/1M API est. · commercial OK32. Mistral 7B Instruct v0.2 — mistralai, 7.2B · ~8.0 GB VRAM · $0.16/1M API est. · commercial OK33. Llama 3.1 8B — meta-llama, 8B · ~10 GB VRAM · $0.16/1M API est. · commercial OK34. Meta Llama 3 8B — meta-llama, 8B · ~10 GB VRAM · $0.16/1M API est. · commercial OK35. Phi 4 mini instruct — microsoft, 3.8B · ~6.0 GB VRAM · $0.22/1M API · commercial OK36. Qwen2.5 1.5B — Qwen, 1.5B · ~3.0 GB VRAM · $0.11/1M API est. · commercial OK37. NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 4B BF16 — nvidia, 4B · ~6.0 GB VRAM · $0.13/1M API est. · non-commercial38. h2ovl mississippi 800m — h2oai, 800M · ~2.0 GB VRAM · $0.11/1M API est. · commercial OK39. h2ovl mississippi 2b — h2oai, 2.2B · ~4.0 GB VRAM · $0.12/1M API est. · commercial OK40. Nomic Embed Text v1.5 — Nomic AI, 137M · ~2.0 GB VRAM · $0.10/1M API est. · commercial OKShowing the top 40 of 331. See all →
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