← Every modelAlibaba (Qwen) · 8B, dense

Qwen3 8B

The default first model for most people. Good enough at writing, chat and light code to be useful every day, and small enough to run fast on an 8 GB card.

ollama run qwen3:8b

Needs about 7 GB of graphics memory, or unified memory on a Mac. First time? Install Ollama, then paste that into a terminal.

Download5.2 GB
Memory to runAbout 7 GB
Read per token5.2 GB
LicenseApache 2.0
Context32K tokens, 128K with YaRN
ReleasedApril 2025
Good for
  • Everyday chat and writing help
  • Light coding questions
  • Local assistants and home automation
  • Thinking mode for step-by-step answers
Not the best pick for
  • Big refactors across many files
  • Anything where a wrong fact is costly
135 GPUs and Macs

What runs Qwen3 8B

Estimated speed on each card at the smallest memory size that fits it, from memory bandwidth. As a dense model it reads all its weights for every token, so memory bandwidth sets the speed.

Runs great 109 cards

Cheapest build from our list that runs it well: Used desktop + RTX 3060 12 GB, from $600 used, at about 38 tok/s. See the builds.

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