Model · Meta · Text
Llama 3.1 8B
Meta's small open-weight model. Runs on consumer hardware (16GB GPU or modern laptop) and remains a strong default for local-first AI.
- Modality
- Text
- License
- Llama 3 Community License (Open weights)
- Parameter size
- 8B
- Context window
- 128,000 tokens
- Released
- July 23, 2024
- Last verified
- October 28, 2026
- Runs locally
- Yes
What you need to run it
- Mac
- Yes. Any Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer) with at least 8 GB (16 GB recommended) of memory. Newer chips are faster, but memory is what decides whether it runs.
- Windows / Linux PC
- NVIDIA works best. A graphics card with at least 6 GB (8 GB recommended) of video memory.
- No graphics card
- Works. Runs on a normal computer's processor, just slower.
One of the easiest models to run: Ollama and LM Studio handle it on any recent Mac, and it is usable on a plain CPU.
Numbers are for: 4-bit build of the 8B (about 5 GB). Our estimate from the model’s size — the maker publishes no figure.
Strengths
- Runs on a single consumer GPU or modern laptop
- 128k context window
- Mature ecosystem — widely supported runners
Weaknesses
- Reasoning depth modest compared to 70B
- Community License restricts use at >700M MAU
Try it
| Where | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Hugging Face | weights | Gated — accept license to download |
| Ollama | local | ollama run llama3.1 |
| Groq | hosted-api | Free tier |
| OpenRouter | hosted-api | API key required |
Version history
- Llama 3.3 70B Dec 2024
- Llama 3.2 Vision Sep 2024
- Llama 3.1 8B Jul 2024 Current
Official sources
- Model card model
Change log
- — Added hardware requirements (Mac support, memory, NVIDIA). Source: estimate from size; Ollama llama3.1 page (4.9 GB); mlx-community Meta-Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct-4bit.
- — Not deprecated: Meta has released no newer small Llama — its latest models are Llama 4 Scout and Maverick (April 2025), with no 8B-class size. For local use it is now outclassed by Gemma 4 E4B / 12B and Qwen3.5 9B, which add image input and thinking mode under the more permissive Apache 2.0.
- — Initial entry.
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