91% of ChatGPT level
writes text on a 16 GB machine
· needs ~8.2 GB · Free to download · License: Gemma Terms of Use
MacBook Air, 16 GB
We count about 16 GB memory. A model is listed when the memory it needs is no more than 12 GB.
Tasks you can do on this device
- Turn a photo or scan into text
- Write a book or story
- Help my kid with a school essay
- Write a technical report
- Fix grammar and spelling
- Write emails and letters
- Summarize long documents
- Translate a document
- Make an image from a description
- Make old or blurry photos sharp
- Remove or replace a background
- Sort and find my photos
- Describe what's in a photo
- Make a short video or animate a photo
- Transcribe a recording
- Read text aloud
- Make an audiobook from my writing
- Add subtitles to a video
- Write song lyrics or chords
- Practise pronunciation in another language
- Help with homework
- Make flashcards and quizzes
- Ask questions about my textbook or notes
- Digitize handwritten notes
- Learn a language
- Record and summarize lectures
- Chat with an AI privately
- Meeting notes and minutes
- Search all my company documents
- Pull data from invoices and forms
- Translate for clients
- Identify a plant or flower
- Diagnose a sick plant
- Plan an interior design
- Design a flower arrangement
- Plan my garden
- DIY and repair help
- Smart home assistant offline
- Find a recipe from what's in my fridge
- Digitize old family recipes
- Plan meals for the week
- Translate a foreign recipe
- Make my cookbook
- Understand my bank statements
- Make a household budget
- Explain a letter or contract
- Organize receipts and bills
- Read old handwriting and documents
- Restore old family photos
- Build a family tree from records
- Record grandparents' stories
- Translate old letters
- Write a speech or toast
- Help me write code
- Explain code or an error
- Automate spreadsheets
- Chat with my own files
- Run AI on a Raspberry Pi or old PC
Models that fit on a MacBook Air, 16 GB
A step behind Gemma 3 12B, and a clear step ahead of a 3B toy model.
a quick chatbot that fits smaller computers
· needs ~5.2 GB · Free to download · License: Apache 2.0
89% of ChatGPT level
pleasant everyday notes on a laptop
· needs ~5 GB · Free to download · License: Gemma Terms of Use
88% of ChatGPT level
writes text, and it can look at a photo
· needs ~3.4 GB · Free to download · License: Gemma Terms of Use
85% of ChatGPT level
careful answers, strong for its size
· needs ~9.1 GB · Free to download · License: MIT
A handy junior for small coding jobs. It is not in the same league as Qwen3.8 27B or a 2026 cloud coding agent.
helps with short bits of code
· needs ~4.7 GB · Free to download · License: Apache 2.0
83% of ChatGPT level
writes and translates across languages
· needs ~5 GB · Free to download · License: CC-BY-NC 4.0
Strong at getting the meaning across, including languages the big chatbots treat lightly. For French, Spanish, or German prose, a large Qwen or Gemma usually sounds more natural.
translates many languages
· needs ~2.5 GB · Free to download · License: CC-BY-NC 4.0
79% of ChatGPT level
short rewrites on a tiny computer
· needs ~2 GB · Free to download · License: Llama 3.2 Community License
Transcription: 93% of Rev.ai
turns speech into text, in the larger file
· needs ~3.1 GB · Free to download · License: MIT
Transcription: 99% of Rev.ai
turns recordings into text, with less waiting
· needs ~1.6 GB · Free to download · License: MIT
Closer to a performance than Kokoro. Still not a substitute for a directed studio voice.
reads text aloud with more expression
· needs ~2 GB · Free to download · License: MIT
Often compared with DALL·E 3 and Midjourney v6 for prompt following. The license is non-commercial.
makes pictures that follow the prompt
· needs ~12 GB · Free to download · License: Non-commercial FLUX.1 Dev license
The document reader to pick when the scan is more than a clean page of print.
reads text from scans (OCR), including tables
· needs ~5.5 GB · Free to download · License: Apache 2.0
Near the top of small open English voices in public listening tests. Less expressive than a top cloud voice studio.
reads text aloud in a warm voice
· needs ~0.3 GB · Free to download · License: Apache 2.0
Within a small gap of Whisper large-v3 on English, and faster.
turns speech into text, in a smaller file
· needs ~1.5 GB · Free to download · License: MIT
A vision model that reads pages and answers questions about them. More general than a pure OCR engine.
reads text from scans (OCR) and answers about the picture
· needs ~9 GB · Free to download · License: Apache 2.0
Close to FLUX.1 Dev for a lot of everyday prompts, and well ahead of Stable Diffusion XL.
makes pictures quickly
· needs ~8 GB · Free to download · License: Apache 2.0
A sketch, not a finished ad. Enough to see an idea move.
makes a short, rough video clip
· needs ~8 GB · Free to download · License: Apache 2.0
Transcription: 97% of Rev.ai
turns speech into text, almost anywhere
· needs ~0.5 GB · Free to download · License: MIT
Fine for playful and stylized pictures. A clear step behind FLUX on instructions and realistic scenes.
makes pictures on small computers
· needs ~7 GB · Free to download · License: OpenRAIL++
Invoice OCR: 107% of ABBYY (2022 test)
reads text from scans (OCR), including tilted photos
· needs ~0.2 GB · Free to download · License: Apache 2.0
Hermes 3 8B
Fine-tune of Llama 3.1 8BA fine-tune, not a new architecture. It sits with other 8B chat models, and it is not given a separate ChatGPT percentage here.
A Nous Research fine-tune of Llama 3.1 8B
· needs ~4.7 GB · Free to download · License: Llama 3.1 Community License
Understandable and a bit robotic next to Kokoro.
reads text aloud in a plain voice
Runs in:· needs ~0.1 GB · Free to download · License: GPL-3.0
Invoice OCR: 84% of ABBYY (2022 test)
reads text from scans (OCR)
· needs under 0.1 GB · Free to download · License: Apache 2.0
A cleanup tool, not a rival to FLUX.
enlarges a picture you already have
Runs in:· needs ~0.3 GB · Free to download · License: BSD 3-Clause
A standard local search model. Quality of the written answer comes from the chat model beside it.
archives and searches your documents
· needs ~1.2 GB · Free to download · License: MIT
A popular small embedder in Ollama. bge-m3 is the better default when files mix languages.
searches English documents
· needs ~0.3 GB · Free to download · License: Apache 2.0