Device profile · iOS

Best local LLMs for iPhone Air

iPhone Air has ~8 GB usable for model weights and runs 56 of 135 popular models. Best tool: Apple Foundation Models.

49 run well 7 tight fit 79 too heavy

Usable memory: ~8 GB
Models run: 56
Too large: 79
Top pick: 4B

Top pick Q4_K_M

Gemma 3 4B Yes

Runs at Q4_K_M using ~3.8 GB of ~8 GB usable. You have room for Q8_0 for higher quality.

Runs on iPhone Air

Compatible models 56 total

Too large for this device

DeepSeek-V4-Pro Kimi K2 Instruct Kimi K2.6 Kimi K2.7 Code GLM-5.2 DeepSeek R1 DeepSeek V3 DeepSeek-R1-0528 Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B-A55B Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct MiniMax-M1-80k MiniMax M3 Llama 4 Maverick GLM-4.6 DeepSeek-V4-Flash Qwen3 235B A22B dots.llm1 Nemotron 3 Super 120B-A12B Laguna S 2.1 gpt-oss 120B Command A Llama 4 Scout GLM-4.5-Air Sarvam-105B Hunyuan-A13B-Instruct Qwen2.5 72B Llama 3.3 70B Llama-3.3-Nemotron-Super-49B-v1 Mixtral 8x7B Seed-OSS 36B Instruct Qwen3.6 35B-A3B Command R 35B Ornith 1.0 35B Qwen-AgentWorld 35B-A3B Yi 1.5 34B Falcon-H1-34B-Instruct Laguna XS 2.1 Gemma 4 31B Qwen2.5 32B Qwen3 32B DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen 32B Qwen2.5 Coder 32B Granite 4.0 H Small GLM-4-32B-0414 EXAONE 4.0 32B OLMo 2 32B Instruct Granite 4.0 H Small Olmo 3.1 32B Instruct Qwen3 30B-A3B Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B North Mini Code 1.0 Sarvam-30B Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B Nemotron Cascade 2 30B-A3B GLM-4.7-Flash Granite 4.1 30B Qwen3.6 27B Gemma 2 27B Gemma 3 27B Gemma 4 26B-A4B Mistral Small 3 24B Sarvam-M 24B Mistral Small 3.1 24B Magistral Small Devstral Small LFM2 24B-A2B gpt-oss 20B ERNIE 4.5 21B-A3B DeepSeek-V2-Lite Phi-4 14B Qwen2.5 14B Qwen3 14B DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen 14B Qwen2.5 Coder 14B Phi-4-reasoning Mistral Nemo 12B Gemma 3 12B Gemma 4 12B Llama 3.2 Vision 11B

Best way to run models on iOS

Runtime guide iOS

Beginner: Apple Foundation Models, Built into iOS 26, ~3B on-device model, zero download, fully private.

Power user: PocketPal AI, Run any GGUF from HuggingFace fully offline.

Phones realistically run 1B-4B class models. Anything larger thermally throttles or OOMs.

Full iOS tool guide →

FAQ

What is the best local LLM for iPhone Air?

Gemma 3 4B is the strongest model that runs comfortably, using ~3.8 GB at Q4_K_M of the ~8 GB usable on iPhone Air.

How much of iPhone Air's memory can I use for a model?

About 8 GB. On a CPU-only machine, leave headroom for the OS and apps.

Which tool should I use on iOS?

Apple Foundation Models (Built into iOS 26, ~3B on-device model, zero download, fully private.) or PocketPal AI for speed. Phones realistically run 1B-4B class models. Anything larger thermally throttles or OOMs.

Compare nearby devices

Hardware with a similar usable pool, and how many of the 135 tracked models each runs next to iPhone Air's 56.

Google Pixel 9 Pro

~10.5 GB usable · runs 62 of 135

Google Pixel 10 Pro

~10.5 GB usable · runs 62 of 135

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

~8.5 GB usable · runs 56 of 135

Generic Android Phone (12GB RAM)

~8.5 GB usable · runs 56 of 135

iPhone 17 Pro

~8 GB usable · runs 56 of 135

iPhone 15 Pro

~4.5 GB usable · runs 37 of 135

-19

Sources

Memory figures are estimates. See methodology.