Best Local LLMs for the Apple M3 Max (30-core GPU)

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

Written by Jakub Rusinowski · Last updated September 19, 2026

Best all-round pick: GPT-OSS 120B

The Apple M3 Max (30-core GPU) has 96 GB of unified memory, of which about 72 GB is available to a model. The largest model it can hold is GPT-OSS 120B (117B, 71.3 GB at Q4_K_M).

Best models overall on the Apple M3 Max (30-core GPU)

Model	Score	Memory at Q4_K_M	Context	Licence
GPT-OSS 120B	96.4	71.3 GB	128K	Apache-2.0
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
Cogito v1 70B	92.6	43.1 GB	128K	Apache-2.0
Command R+ (104B)	92.6	63.6 GB	125K	CC-BY-NC

Best model by what you are doing

Workload	Recommended on this GPU
Coding	Qwen3-Coder 80B-A3B (MoE) (98.6) Qwen 3.5 72B (96.6) Llama 3.3 70B Instruct (96.1)
General assistant	GPT-OSS 120B (96.4) GLM-5.1 72B (94.7) Qwen 3.5 72B (94.4)
Reasoning	GLM-5.1 72B (100) Gemma 4 27B ⭐ (97.1) Qwen 3.5 72B (96.8)
RAG	Llama 4 Scout 17B (94.4) Gemma 4 31B (94.3) Qwen 3.6 27B (93.3)
Agents	Ternary Bonsai 27B (90.4) Nemotron-Cascade 2 30B-A3B (89.7) Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B (89.3)
Vision	Qwen 3.5 72B (99.7) Llama 3.2 90B Vision Instruct (97.1) Qwen 3.7 35B-A3B (94.8)

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 M3 Max (30-core GPU)?

GPT-OSS 120B is the strongest all-round pick that fits its 72 GB.

What is the largest model the Apple M3 Max (30-core GPU) can run?

GPT-OSS 120B — 117B parameters, needing 71.3 GB at Q4_K_M.

How much of the Apple M3 Max (30-core GPU)'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.

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← All GPUs | Apple M3 Max (30-core GPU) specs