Best Local LLMs for the Apple M3 Ultra

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

Written by Jakub Rusinowski · Last updated July 12, 2026

Best all-round pick: Qwen 3.5 397B

The Apple M3 Ultra has 512 GB of unified memory, of which about 384 GB is available to a model. The largest model it can hold is Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B (MoE) (480B, 290.6 GB at Q4_K_M).

Best models overall on the Apple M3 Ultra

Model	Score	Memory at Q4_K_M	Context	Licence
Qwen 3.5 397B	96.3	240.5 GB	125K	Apache 2.0
Qwen 3.5 397B-A17B	95.9	240.5 GB	256K	Apache 2.0
GLM-6 355B-A32B	95.4	215.1 GB	195K	MIT
Llama 4 Maverick 17B	95.3	242.3 GB	1M	Llama Community
Qwen 3 235B-A22B (MoE)	93.8	142.7 GB	125K	Apache 2.0
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash	93.8	172.3 GB	977K	MIT

Best model by what you are doing

Workload	Recommended on this GPU
Coding	Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B (MoE) (100) GLM-6 355B-A32B (99.1) DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (97.8)
General assistant	Qwen 3.5 397B (96.3) Qwen 3.5 397B-A17B (95.9) GLM-6 355B-A32B (95.4)
Reasoning	Qwen 3.5 397B (98.9) Llama 4 Maverick 17B (98.2) Qwen 3 235B-A22B (MoE) (98.1)
RAG	DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (97.6) DeepSeek V4-Flash (97.4) Qwen 3.5 397B-A17B (94.9)
Agents	Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B (MoE) (97.2) GLM-6 355B-A32B (94.6) Ternary Bonsai 27B (87.8)
Vision	Qwen 3.5 397B (100) MiniMax M3-VL (96.8) Llama 3.2 90B Vision Instruct (91.5)

How these numbers are calculated

Usable memory is 384 GB of the card's 512 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 Ultra?

Qwen 3.5 397B is the strongest all-round pick that fits its 384 GB.

What is the largest model the Apple M3 Ultra can run?

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B (MoE) — 480B parameters, needing 290.6 GB at Q4_K_M.

How much of the Apple M3 Ultra's memory can a model actually use?

About 384 GB of its 512 GB, because macOS reserves a share of unified memory for the system.

Compatibility Checks for the Apple M3 Ultra

By Workload

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