Can my Mac run local AI?
Any Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer) on macOS 15 runs Outlier, and memory decides which models: 8 GB runs Nano; 16 GB adds Lite; 24 GB adds Quick, Core and Vision 3.8; 64 GB adds Plus. Pick your Mac below to see every model and how fast it writes.
| Model | On this Mac | Speed |
|---|---|---|
| Pick your Mac above. (This checker needs JavaScript; the table under “Where the numbers come from” has the same figures.) | ||
Mac not listed? Pick one with the same chip and memory. An Intel Mac cannot run Outlier: it needs Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) and macOS 15 or later. Nothing you pick here leaves this page.
Outlier Pro: $49 once · Black Friday price, all of November: $24.50 once, until 30 November
Free to start (Nano and Lite). macOS 15+, Apple silicon. Refund window: 30 days, no questions asked.
How to read the answer
Fits comfortably means the model's weights plus a 4 GB working set fit in memory, the same test the app uses when it recommends a model. No memory to spare means your memory is exactly the model's minimum: it runs, but other apps will push it into swap. Loads, expect it to swap means the app lets you try it, but it will be slow until you close other apps. Outlier Plus is different: it streams its experts from the SSD, so it runs on a 64 GB Mac, slowly, by design.
Speed is how many tokens a model writes per second once it starts answering. On an M1 Ultra it is our own measurement. On every other Mac it is that measurement scaled by your Mac's memory bandwidth (the M1 Ultra has 800 GB/s), and it says so. The only time we have checked that projection on another Mac, Nano on a 16 GB M4 Air wrote about 32 tok/s, about 3× the 10.8 tok/s the projection gives, so read the estimates as conservative.
Where the numbers come from
Each model's minimum memory, download size and speed on an M1 Ultra (800 GB/s), measured by Outlier:
| Model | Size | Minimum memory | Download | Speed on M1 Ultra |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Outlier Nano | 4B dense | 6 GB | 2.37 GB | 71.7 tok/s |
| Outlier Lite | 9B dense | 12 GB | 5.04 GB | 53.4 tok/s |
| Outlier Quick | 26B MoE / 4B active | 16 GB | 15.61 GB | 43.6 tok/s |
| Outlier Core | 27B dense | 24 GB | 15.13 GB | 20.7 tok/s |
| Outlier Plus | 397B MoE / 17B active | 64 GB | 209 GB | 1.59 tok/s |
| Outlier Vision 3.8 | 27B dense | 24 GB | 15.5 GB | 17.2 tok/s |
The memory options and bandwidth of each Mac are Apple's published figures. The same data drives the per-Mac pages in Run Outlier on your Mac; for what each amount of memory holds in general, see how much RAM a local model needs, and for the step by step, installing Outlier on a Mac.
Outlier Pro: $49 once · Black Friday price, all of November: $24.50 once, until 30 November
Free to start (Nano and Lite). macOS 15+, Apple silicon. Refund window: 30 days, no questions asked.