Transcription models that run on 16 GB

38 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 recorded speech into text. They are metered by the minute or the second of audio, so cost follows the length of the recording and not the difficulty of it. What separates them is languages covered, whether they mark who is speaking, and whether they run in real time or only on a finished file — a model that is excellent on a podcast may be unusable on a live call.

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Transcription models Models that run on 16 GB