Best Local LLMs for the Apple M2 Ultra

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

Written by Jakub Rusinowski · Last updated July 12, 2026

Best all-round pick: Qwen 3 235B-A22B (MoE)

The Apple M2 Ultra has 192 GB of unified memory, of which about 144 GB is available to a model. The largest model it can hold is Qwen 3 235B-A22B (MoE) (235B, 142.7 GB at Q4_K_M).

Best models overall on the Apple M2 Ultra

Model	Score	Memory at Q4_K_M	Context	Licence
Qwen 3 235B-A22B (MoE)	97	142.7 GB	125K	Apache 2.0
GPT-oss 120B	95.1	73.3 GB	125K	Apache-2.0
MiniMax M3 230B-A10B	94.4	139.7 GB	977K	Modified MIT (attribution required)
MiniMax M2.5 230B	94.2	139.7 GB	977K	Modified MIT (attribution required)
Nemotron 70B Instruct	94.1	43.4 GB	125K	Llama Community
Qwen 3.5 122B-A10B (MoE)	93.3	74.5 GB	125K	Apache 2.0

Best model by what you are doing

Workload	Recommended on this GPU
Coding	Devstral-2 123B (97.8) MiniMax M3 230B-A10B (97.7) MiniMax M2.5 230B (97.4)
General assistant	Qwen 3 235B-A22B (MoE) (97) GPT-oss 120B (95.1) MiniMax M3 230B-A10B (94.4)
Reasoning	Qwen 3 235B-A22B (MoE) (100) GLM-5.1 72B (98) Qwen 3.5 122B-A10B (MoE) (96.4)
RAG	MiniMax M3 230B-A10B (96.3) MiniMax M2.5 230B (96.2) Llama 4 Scout 17B (93.1)
Agents	MiniMax M2.7 230B-A10B (89.1) Ternary Bonsai 27B (88.8) Qwen 3.5 122B-A10B (MoE) (86.9)
Vision	MiniMax M3-VL (99.4) Qwen 3.5 72B (96.4) Llama 3.2 90B Vision Instruct (94.7)

How these numbers are calculated

Usable memory is 144 GB of the card's 192 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 Ultra?

Qwen 3 235B-A22B (MoE) is the strongest all-round pick that fits its 144 GB.

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

Qwen 3 235B-A22B (MoE) — 235B parameters, needing 142.7 GB at Q4_K_M.

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

About 144 GB of its 192 GB, because macOS reserves a share of unified memory for the system.

Compatibility Checks for the Apple M2 Ultra

By Workload

← All GPUs | Apple M2 Ultra specs