Evaluation models that run on 16 GB

13 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.

Tools for judging what a model produced: scoring runs, tracing a chain of calls, catching a regression before a user does. Priced per trace or per evaluation. Most use a model as the judge, which is worth knowing, because it means your evaluation has a bill and an opinion of its own.

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Evaluation models Models that run on 16 GB