Gemma 4 26B-A4B on Apple M3 Ultra (256 GB)

Can the Apple M3 Ultra (256 GB) run Gemma 4 26B-A4B?

Yes, it runs great

Runs great. At F16 it needs about 68.0 GB of 192 GB usable, with an estimated speed of 43.3 tok/s.

Best quant: F16
Generation speed: 43.3 tok/s
Prompt processing: 4,634 tok/s
First token (1K prompt): 0.3 s
Largest safe context: 256K

Best app to run it on the Apple M3 Ultra (256 GB)

On macOS

LM Studio

Desktop app · runs on llama.cpp, MLX · use the MLX build

Runs the MLX build, typically 35–90% faster than GGUF for a model with 3.8B active parameters on Apple silicon.
Point-and-click: search, download and chat in one window.

Open Gemma 4 26B-A4B in LM Studio

MLX LM Runs the MLX build, typically 35–90% faster than GGUF for a model with 3.8B active parameters on Apple silicon.
Ollama One command with Ollama’s own build of this model.

Want an agent? Gemma 4 26B-A4B supports tool use, so you can pair a llama.cpp or MLX LM server with one of these. Apps that run on this computer come first.

Coding agents

Personal assistants

How we choose: the files published for this model, your operating system and GPU, whether it fits fully in memory, and published speed tests (MLX vs llama.cpp on Apple silicon, vLLM vs llama.cpp vs Ollama on NVIDIA). Details.

Download Gemma 4 26B-A4B

Recommended for the Apple M3 Ultra (256 GB): F16. Every other quantization has its own download link in the table below.

Quickest · Ollama

One command downloads a ready-to-run version and starts a chat.

Get Ollama at ollama.com/download (opens in a new tab) · model page (opens in a new tab)

ollama run gemma4:26b-a4b-it-bf16

Quantized files · GGUF

Works in LM Studio, llama.cpp, Jan and Ollama. No sign-in needed.

Download the F16 files (opens in a new tab)

huggingface.co/unsloth/gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-GGUF (opens in a new tab)

ollama run hf.co/unsloth/gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-GGUF

Original weights · Hugging Face

Full-precision files from Google, for fine-tuning, vLLM, Transformers.

huggingface.co/google/gemma-4-26B-A4B-it (opens in a new tab)

No sign-in needed.

Official repo · GitHub

Reference code, inference scripts and docs from Google. The weights themselves download from Hugging Face.

github.com/google-deepmind/gemma (opens in a new tab)

Google DeepMind’s official Gemma library.

git clone https://github.com/google-deepmind/gemma

Links checked 3 days ago against Hugging Face, Ollama and GitHub.

How it’s rated

Quality 92Excellent quality (A+) · 92 of 100: how capable the model is at F16, whatever it runs on. Match score 89/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.: How capable the model itself is at F16, from its editorial quality tier scaled by the quantization or precision. It’s the same on any hardware that runs this variant. Scale: A+ 85+ · A 70+ · B 55+ · C 40+ · D under 40.
Runs Runs great: How well it runs on the Apple M3 Ultra (256 GB): speed, capped by how well it fits in memory. Runs great: 30+ tokens/s (or near the image, video or decision speed target) · Runs well: 10+ tokens/s · Slow: 3+ tokens/s · Very slow: under 3 · Won’t run: doesn’t fit even with offload. A tight fit or RAM offload caps it at Runs well; heavy offload caps it at Slow.

Match score

To order lists, each result also gets a match score out of 100 from four parts. It favors the most capable model that still runs well.

Model qualityEditorial quality tier of the model, scaled by the quantization or precision used.	41.6 / 45
Memory fitFull marks when the model fits in the share of unified memory the GPU can use; fewer when it goes past that limit.	25.0 / 25
SpeedGeneration speed against a 40 tokens/s target for LLMs, or render time against a target for image and video.	15.0 / 15
Memory useRewards using the memory you have, so a bigger, better variant beats a tiny one that leaves most memory idle.	8.2 / 15
Match score	89.8 / 100

The match score orders results; it is not shown as a grade. Quality and Runs are the two ratings in the tables.

Every quantization on the Apple M3 Ultra (256 GB)

Quant	Memory needed	Available	Speed	Runs	Quality	Download
`Q2_K`	26.7 GB	192 GB	172 tok/s	Runs great	64Good quality (B) · 64 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 72/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (UD-Q2_K_XL) (opens in a new tab)
`Q3_K_M`	29.0 GB	192 GB	151 tok/s	Runs great	77Great quality (A) · 77 of 100: how capable the model is at Q3_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 78/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q4_K_M`	32.1 GB	192 GB	129 tok/s	Runs great	87Excellent quality (A+) · 87 of 100: how capable the model is at Q4_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 83/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q5_K_M`	34.7 GB	192 GB	113 tok/s	Runs great	89Excellent quality (A+) · 89 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 84/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q6_K`	37.5 GB	192 GB	101 tok/s	Runs great	91Excellent quality (A+) · 91 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 85/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`Q8_0`	43.7 GB	192 GB	80.5 tok/s	Runs great	92Excellent quality (A+) · 92 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 86/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab)
`F16`	68.0 GB	192 GB	43.3 tok/s	Runs great	92Excellent quality (A+) · 92 of 100: how capable the model is at F16, whatever it runs on. Match score 89/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF · folder (opens in a new tab) Original weights (opens in a new tab)

Memory figures assume 8K of context. Longer conversations or documents grow the KV cache.

Other hardware that runs it

92Excellent quality (A+) · 92 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 96/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Apple M1 Max (64 GB) Q8_0 · 46.6 tok/s · Runs great
92Excellent quality (A+) · 92 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 96/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Apple M4 Max (64 GB) Q8_0 · 59.7 tok/s · Runs great
91Excellent quality (A+) · 91 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 96/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Apple M4 Pro (48 GB) Q6_K · 44.3 tok/s · Runs great
91Excellent quality (A+) · 91 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 96/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Q6_K · 164 tok/s · Runs great
92Excellent quality (A+) · 92 of 100: how capable the model is at F16, whatever it runs on. Match score 95/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell F16 · 85.2 tok/s · Runs great
91Excellent quality (A+) · 91 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 95/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Q6_K · 111 tok/s · Runs well (tight fit)

Quick answers

How much memory does Gemma 4 26B-A4B need on the M3 Ultra 256GB?

At F16 it needs about 68.0 GB. The M3 Ultra 256GB has 192 GB usable.

How fast is Gemma 4 26B-A4B on the M3 Ultra 256GB?

About 43.3 tok/s at F16, an estimate from the hardware’s memory bandwidth and the size of the model.

Which quantization of Gemma 4 26B-A4B should I use on the M3 Ultra 256GB?

F16. Of the versions that fit, it is the one that runs best; when two run equally well, the check prefers the higher-rated one.

Estimates come from published hardware specs and our open formulas, not from running the model on your machine. Real speed varies with runtime, drivers and settings. Numbers marked “Measured” come from a linked benchmark.