Qwen2.5 VL 7B
Show it a screenshot and it will tell you what is going on. Fits in 8 GB.
How we picked
We kept models our formula says need 8 GB or less. Then we sorted by size, since bigger usually means smarter. Close other apps while you run them.
| Model | Maker | Trust | Quality | RAM needed | Business | Sign-up |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen2.5 VL 7B | Alibaba Qwen | 84 | Good | 8 GB | Yes | No |
| Qwen3 8B | Alibaba Qwen | 84 | Good | 8 GB | Yes | No |
| DeepSeek R1 0528 8B | DeepSeek | 84 | Good | 8 GB | Yes | No |
| Granite 3.3 8B | IBM | 84 | Good | 8 GB | Yes | No |
| Gemma 4 E4B | 84 | Good | 8 GB | Yes | No | |
| Hermes 3 8B | Nous Research | 64 | Good | 8 GB | With limits | No |
| Llama 3.1 8B | Meta | 58 | Good | 8 GB | With limits | Yes |
| Command R7B | Cohere | 38 | Good | 8 GB | No | Yes |
| Gemma 3n E4B | 58 | Good | 8 GB | With limits | Yes | |
| DeepSeek R1 Distill 7B | DeepSeek | 84 | Good | 8 GB | Yes | No |
| Olmo 3 7B | Ai2 | 100 | Good | 8 GB | Yes | No |
| Mistral 7B v0.3 | Mistral AI | 84 | Good | 8 GB | Yes | No |
| Granite 4.0 H Tiny | IBM | 84 | Good | 8 GB | Yes | No |
| Gemma 3 4B | 58 | Good | 6 GB | With limits | Yes | |
| Qwen3 4B 2507 | Alibaba Qwen | 84 | Good | 5 GB | Yes | No |
| Phi-4 mini | Microsoft | 84 | Basic | 5 GB | Yes | No |
| Llama 3.2 3B | Meta | 58 | Basic | 5 GB | With limits | Yes |
| SmolLM3 3B | Hugging Face | 100 | Basic | 5 GB | Yes | No |
| Granite 3.3 2B | IBM | 84 | Basic | 4 GB | Yes | No |
| LFM2 1.2B | Liquid AI | 64 | Basic | 3 GB | With limits | No |
Top picks
Qwen3 8B
Thinks step by step on a normal laptop. Fits in 8 GB.
DeepSeek R1 0528 8B
A newer small thinker. MIT license, so legal can relax.
Granite 3.3 8B
IBM's business model. It wears a tie to the chat.
Gemma 4 E4B
Small and efficient. Your laptop will barely notice it is there.
Hermes 3 8B
Built on Llama 3.1, so Meta's rules come along for the ride.
Rankings use our published method and change when facts change. Nobody paid to be listed.