Embeddings models that run on 16 GB

59 models with published weights that fit in 16 GB — the common laptop. Counted at four-bit quantisation, weights only, leaving the machine about a third of its memory and a gigabyte for context: room for roughly 16 billion parameters. A mixture of experts is counted in full, because it is held in full even though only a few experts compute.

The commonest laptop configuration, and the point where a genuinely useful model runs locally: fourteen billion parameters at four-bit fits with room to spare for the context. Expect a capable general assistant that will not match the frontier, and remember that anything else the machine is doing competes for the same memory.

Models that turn text into a vector so it can be searched by meaning rather than by words. They are cheap — usually cents per million tokens, and often priced for input only, since nothing comes back but numbers. Two things decide the choice: the dimension of the vector, which sets what your database will cost to hold, and whether the model was trained for your language. Changing model later means re-embedding everything you have.

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Embeddings models Models that run on 16 GB