Kimi Linear 48B A3B needs ~30.1 GB VRAM. MacBook Pro M3 Pro 36GB has 25.9 GB. With Q3_K_S quantization, expect ~3 tok/s.
Operating mode
Interactive favors responsiveness, while light API and scale-out lean harder on serving readiness. The fit stays the same, but the recommendation lens changes.
Current mode
Balanced
Balanced for general local use. Keeps the ranking neutral across personal and serving workflows.
Select quantization to explore
10.0 GB over capacity — needs offload or smaller quantization
Fit status
Too heavy
Decode
2.2 tok/s
TTFT
89274 ms
Safe context
4K
Memory
35.9 GB / 25.9 GB
Offload
30%
It fits through host-memory offload, and offload is the main reason performance drops.
CPU or host-memory offload is active
About 10% of the working set spills out of accelerator memory, which usually hurts latency and sustained decode throughput.
Very little memory headroom
You can run the model, but there is not much room left for longer context, bigger batches, extra apps, or future model updates.
Shared-memory contention still exists
The OS, browser, and inference runtime all compete for the same physical memory pool, so real-world headroom is less forgiving than raw capacity suggests.
Remove offload with more accelerator memory
Prioritize a GPU or unified-memory tier that fits the whole model natively. Removing offload usually helps more than small compute gains.
Buy headroom, not only minimum fit
A slightly larger memory tier gives you safer context growth and makes the recommendation more future-proof.
Increase host RAM if you keep offloading
This setup may need roughly 3.3 GB of extra host RAM just for the offloaded portion, before OS and other tools.
| Workload | Grade | Fit | Decode | TTFT | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chat | F | Too heavy | 2.2 tok/s | 47823 ms | 4K |
| Coding | F | Too heavy | 2.2 tok/s | 89274 ms | 4K |
| Agentic Coding | F | Too heavy | 2.1 tok/s | 134537 ms | 4K |
| Reasoning | F | Too heavy | 2.2 tok/s | 105505 ms | 4K |
| RAG | F | Too heavy | 2.1 tok/s | 168172 ms | 4K |
How Kimi Linear 48B A3B (48B params) fits at each quantization level on MacBook Pro M3 Pro 36GB (25.9 GB usable).
| Quant | Bits | VRAM | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Q2_KBest for your GPU | 2 | 18.7 GB | Low | A81 |
Q3_K_S | 3 | 23.5 GB | Low | F0 |
Copy-paste commands to run Kimi Linear 48B A3B on your machine.
Run
docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/ggerganov/llama.cpp:full \
--hf-repo "moonshotai/Kimi-Linear-48B-A3B-Instruct" \
--hf-file "Kimi-Linear-48B-A3B-Instruct-Q4_K_M.gguf" \
-c 4096 -ngl 99Upgrade options
Makes the model fit on the accelerator instead of staying completely out of reach.
Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
~$1,099 MSRP
Makes the model fit on the accelerator instead of staying completely out of reach.
Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
~$1,599 MSRP
Makes the model fit on the accelerator instead of staying completely out of reach.
Removes host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
~$2,499 MSRP
Yes, MacBook Pro M3 Pro 36GB can run Kimi Linear 48B A3B at Q3_K_S quantization (Very compromised (needs ~3.3 GB host RAM)). The recommended Q4_K_M requires 35.9 GB which exceeds available memory, but at Q3_K_S it needs only 30.1 GB. Expected decode speed: 3.2 tok/s.
Kimi Linear 48B A3B (48B parameters) requires approximately 35.9 GB at Q4_K_M quantization. On MacBook Pro M3 Pro 36GB, it fits at Q3_K_S using 30.1 GB.
The recommended quantization is Q4_K_M, but on MacBook Pro M3 Pro 36GB the best fitting quantization is Q3_K_S, which uses 30.1 GB.
On MacBook Pro M3 Pro 36GB, Kimi Linear 48B A3B achieves approximately 3.2 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 60467ms using Q3_K_S quantization.
For coding workloads, Kimi Linear 48B A3B on MacBook Pro M3 Pro 36GB receives a F grade with 2.2 tok/s and 4K context.
On MacBook Pro M3 Pro 36GB, Kimi Linear 48B A3B can safely use up to 4K tokens of context at Q3_K_S quantization. The model's official context limit is 1.0M, but available memory constrains the safe maximum.
Paste this snippet into any page to show a live fit card.
<iframe src="https://willitrunai.com/embed/kimi-linear-48b-a3b-on-m3-pro-36gb" width="400" height="180" frameborder="0" style="border:none;border-radius:12px;overflow:hidden;" title="Will It Run AI — fit result"></iframe>
Preview:
| 4 |
26.9 GB |
| Medium |
| F0 |
Q4_K_M | 4 | 29.3 GB | Medium | F0 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 34.6 GB | High | F0 |
Q6_K | 6 | 39.4 GB | High | F0 |
Q8_0 | 8 | 51.4 GB | Very High | F0 |
F16 | 16 | 98.4 GB | Maximum | F0 |
Remove offload with more accelerator memory. Prioritize a GPU or unified-memory tier that fits the whole model natively. Removing offload usually helps more than small compute gains.
Not always. MacBook Pro M3 Pro 36GB can often fit larger models thanks to unified memory, but a discrete GPU with dedicated high-bandwidth VRAM may still decode faster once the model fits. For this combination, the important distinction is capacity versus sustained throughput.