Best Local LLMs for the Apple M2 Max

Name: LLM Configurator — GPU VRAM Checker
Author: LLM Configurator

Written by Jakub Rusinowski · Last updated July 12, 2026

Best all-round pick: Nemotron 70B Instruct

The Apple M2 Max has 96 GB of unified memory, of which about 72 GB is available to a model. The largest model it can hold is Llama 4 Scout 17B (109B, 66.6 GB at Q4_K_M).

Best models overall on the Apple M2 Max

Model	Score	Memory at Q4_K_M	Context	Licence
Nemotron 70B Instruct	98.3	43.4 GB	125K	Llama Community
GLM-5.1 72B	94.7	44.3 GB	125K	MIT
Qwen 3.5 72B	94.4	44.3 GB	125K	Apache 2.0
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct	93.8	43.1 GB	128K	Llama Community
Qwen 2.5 72B Instruct	93.3	44.3 GB	128K	Apache-2.0
Cogito v1 70B	92.6	43.1 GB	128K	Apache-2.0

Best model by what you are doing

Workload	Recommended on this GPU
Coding	Qwen3-Coder 80B-A3B (MoE) (98.6) Qwen 2.5 72B Instruct (97.6) Qwen 3.5 72B (96.6)
General assistant	Nemotron 70B Instruct (98.3) GLM-5.1 72B (94.7) Qwen 3.5 72B (94.4)
Reasoning	GLM-5.1 72B (100) Gemma 4 27B ⭐ (97.1) Qwen 2.5 72B Instruct (97)
RAG	Llama 4 Scout 17B (94.4) Gemma 4 31B (94.3) Qwen 3.6 27B (93.3)
Agents	Ternary Bonsai 27B (90.4) GLM-5.1 72B (88.4) Poolside Laguna XS 2.1 Laguna XS 2.1 33B-A3B (87.3)
Vision	Qwen 3.5 72B (99.7) Llama 3.2 90B Vision Instruct (97.1) Qwen 2.5 VL 72B Instruct (95.1)

How these numbers are calculated

Usable memory is 72 GB of the card's 96 GB, after the share macOS reserves for the system.
Fit is measured at Q4_K_M — quantized weights plus KV cache plus 0.8 GB runtime overhead.
Within this card's budget, models are ranked on how well they use the memory available, not on being small — so the recommendation scales with the hardware.

FAQ

What is the best LLM for the Apple M2 Max?

Nemotron 70B Instruct is the strongest all-round pick that fits its 72 GB.

What is the largest model the Apple M2 Max can run?

Llama 4 Scout 17B — 109B parameters, needing 66.6 GB at Q4_K_M.

How much of the Apple M2 Max's memory can a model actually use?

About 72 GB of its 96 GB, because macOS reserves a share of unified memory for the system.

Compatibility Checks for the Apple M2 Max

By Workload

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