Qwen 3 8B

by Alibaba · qwen-3 family

8B

parameters

text-generation code-generation reasoning multilingual math tool-use summarization

Qwen 3 8B is the workhorse of the Qwen 3 dense lineup, offering an excellent balance of capability and resource efficiency. Features hybrid thinking mode for adaptive reasoning depth and supports tool calling for agentic workflows. At Q4 it fits on 8 GB GPUs with some headroom, and runs comfortably on 12-16 GB hardware. Strong at coding, math, and multilingual tasks — a direct upgrade over Llama 3.1 8B in most benchmarks.

Quick Start with Ollama

ollama run 8b-q4_K_M
Resources Ollama Hugging Face Official Page
Creator Alibaba
Parameters 8B
Architecture transformer-decoder
Context 128K tokens
Released Apr 29, 2025
License Apache 2.0
Ollama qwen3:8b

Quantization Options

Format File Size VRAM Required Quality Ollama Tag
Q4_K_M rec 5.2 GB 7.5 GB
8b-q4_K_M
Q8_0 8.9 GB 11.5 GB
8b-q8_0
F16 16.5 GB 20 GB
8b-fp16

Compatible Hardware

for Q4_K_M (7.5 GB VRAM)

Compatible Hardware

Hardware VRAM Type Fit Est. Speed
Mac Studio M4 Ultra 512GB 512 GB mac Runs ~109 tok/s
Mac Pro M2 Ultra 192GB 192 GB mac Runs ~107 tok/s
Mac Studio M4 Ultra 192GB 192 GB mac Runs ~109 tok/s
Mac Studio M4 Max 128GB 128 GB mac Runs ~73 tok/s
MacBook Pro M4 Max 128GB 128 GB mac Runs ~73 tok/s
MacBook Pro M3 Max 96GB 96 GB mac Runs ~53 tok/s
Mac mini M4 Pro 64GB 64 GB mac Runs ~36 tok/s
Mac Studio M4 Max 64GB 64 GB mac Runs ~73 tok/s
MacBook Pro M4 Max 64GB 64 GB mac Runs ~73 tok/s
Mac mini M4 Pro 48GB 48 GB mac Runs ~36 tok/s
MacBook Pro M3 Max 48GB 48 GB mac Runs ~53 tok/s
MacBook Pro M4 Max 48GB 48 GB mac Runs ~73 tok/s
MacBook Pro M4 Pro 48GB 48 GB mac Runs ~36 tok/s
Mac Studio M4 Max 36GB 36 GB mac Runs ~73 tok/s
MacBook Pro M3 Pro 36GB 36 GB mac Runs ~20 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 32 GB gpu Runs ~239 tok/s
iMac M4 32GB 32 GB mac Runs ~16 tok/s
Mac mini M4 32GB 32 GB mac Runs ~16 tok/s
MacBook Air M4 32GB 32 GB mac Runs ~16 tok/s
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX 24 GB gpu Runs ~128 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 24 GB gpu Runs ~125 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB gpu Runs ~134 tok/s
iMac M3 24GB 24 GB mac Runs ~13 tok/s
Mac mini M2 24GB 24 GB mac Runs ~13 tok/s
Mac mini M4 Pro 24GB 24 GB mac Runs ~36 tok/s
MacBook Air M2 24GB 24 GB mac Runs ~13 tok/s
MacBook Air M4 24GB 24 GB mac Runs ~16 tok/s
MacBook Pro M4 Pro 24GB 24 GB mac Runs ~36 tok/s
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT 20 GB gpu Runs ~107 tok/s
MacBook Pro M3 Pro 18GB 18 GB mac Runs ~20 tok/s
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT 16 GB gpu Runs ~68 tok/s
AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT 16 GB gpu Runs ~83 tok/s
Intel Arc A770 16 GB gpu Runs ~75 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB 16 GB gpu Runs ~38 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super 16 GB gpu Runs ~90 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super 16 GB gpu Runs ~98 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB gpu Runs ~96 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16 GB gpu Runs ~119 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 16 GB gpu Runs ~128 tok/s
iMac M1 16GB 16 GB mac Runs ~9 tok/s
iMac M4 16GB 16 GB mac Runs ~16 tok/s
Mac mini M1 16GB 16 GB mac Runs ~9 tok/s
Mac mini M4 16GB 16 GB mac Runs ~16 tok/s
MacBook Air M2 16GB 16 GB mac Runs ~13 tok/s
MacBook Air M3 16GB 16 GB mac Runs ~13 tok/s
MacBook Air M4 16GB 16 GB mac Runs ~16 tok/s
MacBook Pro M1 16GB 16 GB mac Runs ~9 tok/s
MacBook Pro M2 Pro 16GB 16 GB mac Runs ~27 tok/s
AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT 12 GB gpu Runs ~58 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB 12 GB gpu Runs ~48 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 12GB 12 GB gpu Runs ~122 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Super 12 GB gpu Runs ~67 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 12 GB gpu Runs ~67 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 12 GB gpu Runs ~67 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 12 GB gpu Runs ~90 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11 GB gpu Runs ~82 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 10GB 10 GB gpu Runs ~101 tok/s
AMD Radeon RX 7600 8 GB gpu Runs (tight) ~38 tok/s
Intel Arc A750 8 GB gpu Runs (tight) ~68 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB gpu Runs (tight) ~60 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 8 GB gpu Runs (tight) ~60 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB 8 GB gpu Runs (tight) ~38 tok/s
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 8 GB gpu Runs (tight) ~36 tok/s
MacBook Air M1 8GB 8 GB mac Runs (tight) ~9 tok/s
MacBook Air M2 8GB 8 GB mac Runs (tight) ~13 tok/s

Benchmark Scores

73.5
mmlu