Music models that run on 8 GB

4 models with published weights that fit in 8 GB — a phone, a base iPad, an Air. Counted at four-bit quantisation, weights only, leaving the machine about a third of its memory and a gigabyte for context: room for roughly 7 billion parameters. A mixture of experts is counted in full, because it is held in full even though only a few experts compute.

The memory of a phone, a base iPad or an entry-level laptop. What fits is small: models of a few billion parameters, quick and cheap to run, good at summarising, classifying and simple extraction, and out of their depth on long reasoning. This is also where on-device makes the most sense, because the alternative is a network round trip for something that takes a moment.

Models that compose and render music from a description. They are priced per generation or per second of audio rather than per token. The question that decides whether you can use one commercially is not the price but the terms: makers differ sharply on who owns the output and whether it may be sold, and that is on the maker's page, not in the rate card.

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Music models Models that run on 8 GB