Gemma 4 26B-A4B on Mac Studio M5 Max 36 GB
25.806B (3.8B active) on 36 GB at 614 GB/s. Hardware details · Model details
Yes. Gemma 4 26B-A4B fits on Mac Studio M5 Max 36 GB at the recommended
Q5_K_M configuration, requiring approximately 21.0 GB at 8K context. Practical context capacity is 32K. Expected decode for the recommended configuration is ~119–171 t/s. EstimatedCompatibilityComfortable
Calculated fit
Yes
Calculated Uses under 80% of usable memory. Room for a long context and other work.
Recommended quantization
Q5_K_M
Calculated gguf
Memory required
21.0 GB
Calculated of 30.6 GB usable — 69%
Max practical context
32K
Calculated model supports 256K
Memory budget at 8K context
Model weights ⓘ
17.6 GB Calculated
KV cache ⓘ
1.9 GB Calculated
Runtime overhead ⓘ
1.5 GB Estimated
Total required
21.0 GB Calculated
Headroom ⓘ
9.6 GB Calculated
Highest-precision quantization that leaves headroom: uses 69% of usable memory at 8K context.
Unified memory: weights, KV cache and the OS share the same 36 GB pool. We assume 85% is addressable by the GPU, which matches a headless machine with the wired-memory limit raised.
Mixture of experts: all 25.806B parameters must be resident in memory even though only ~3.8B are active per token. Memory follows total parameters; speed follows active parameters.
Performance
Estimated performance · recommended Q5_K_M
Decode, prefill and TTFT below are estimates for Q5_K_M. We do not have a comparable Q5_K_M measurement on this machine.
Estimated decode
~119–171 t/s
Estimated Q5_K_M; calculated range
Estimated prefill
~1170–2430 t/s
Estimated Q5_K_M; calculated range
Estimated TTFT at 8K
~3.4–7.1 s
Estimated Q5_K_M; calculated range
Hardware load reference
105 W
Measured machine-level load; not this model run
How the estimate is calculated
- Decode: reading 3.8B active parameters at 5.69 bits/weight takes 5.02 ms at 614 GB/s x 88% achieved efficiency.
- MoE routing penalty of 15% applied: expert gathers are less bandwidth-efficient than a dense sweep.
- Prefill: 96 TFLOPS (FP16) x 1.69 calibrated against measured prefill on this platform x 22% assumed model-FLOPs utilisation, divided by 2 x 9.9B parameters per token.
- Prefill uses 9.9B effective parameters, not the 3.8B active in decode: a batch of hundreds of tokens routes across most of the expert pool.
- MoE decode depends on how well the engine batches expert gathers; real results vary more than for dense models.
- Prefill throughput is highly engine-dependent. Flash attention, batch size and quantized KV all move this number substantially, and for sparse mixture-of-experts models it is the least reliable figure we produce.
- This is a calculated estimate, not a measurement. It assumes a single request, a short prompt, no speculative decoding and a warm model already resident in memory.
Estimator version estimator_v1. Stored with every estimated row so old estimates can be regenerated when the model improves.
Submit a benchmarkSubmissions stay pending until reviewed.
This model at other quantizations on this machine
| Quantization | Resident | Disk | Total needed | Utilisation | Fit | Max context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
MLX 4-bit | 14.1 GB | 14.1 GB | 17.4 GB | 57% | Comfortable | 32K |
Q4_K_M | 15.0 GB | 15.0 GB | 18.3 GB | 60% | Comfortable | 32K |
Q5_K_Mrecommended | 17.6 GB | 17.6 GB | 21.0 GB | 69% | Comfortable | 32K |
Q8_0 | 26.0 GB | 26.0 GB | 29.7 GB | 97% | Does not fit | 4K |
BF16 | 48.1 GB | 48.1 GB | 52.4 GB | 171% | Does not fit | 0 |
Cost of running Gemma 4 26B-A4B on this machineUnited States (federal) · C corporation · 8h/day
Monthly economic cost
$28
Calculated after tax
Codex/Claude Code
$100/mo
≈ $100/mo · local is $72 less
Net cash at purchase
$2,702
Calculated VAT not reclaimable
Total over 5 years
$1,706
Calculated after tax, after resale
Cost per USD/1M tokens
$1.55
Calculated 18.3M tokens/month
The $100 comparison uses the Codex Pro 5x / Claude Max 5x plans. A fixed planning conversion is used for USD. This compares monthly spend only: subscriptions have usage limits, local hardware has different capabilities and constraints, and taxes or regional pricing may change the charged amount. Prices checked 7 September 2026.
Purchase-price input: $2,702 in United States (federal), tax/VAT excluded · estimated · Apple Store NL (converted catalogue estimate). This is the localized purchase input; the after-tax economic cost is calculated separately below.
Monthly breakdown
| Depreciation 1,891 over 5 years, straight-line to a 810 residual | $31.52 |
| Electricity 4.7 kWh/month at 0.140/kWh | $0.66 |
| Cost of capital 4.0%/yr on 1,756 average capital employed | $5.85 |
| Monthly cost before tax | $38.03 |
| Electricity tax shield Running costs are deductible business expenses | −$0.14 |
| First-year expensing §179 (100.0%) | −$9.46 |
| Monthly economic cost after tax | $28.43 |
Three different numbers, deliberately
Cash cost
$2,702
Money that leaves the bank account on day one, net of reclaimable VAT.
Accounting depreciation
$31.52/month
$1,891 written down over 5 years to a $810 residual.
After-tax economic cost
$28.43/month
Depreciation plus running costs plus cost of capital, less the tax those deductions save. This is the figure to compare between machines.
Assumptions and sources (verified 2026-09-07)
VAT rate
0% Official spec
VAT recoverable
0% Official spec
Federal C-corporation estimate at the flat 21% rate. Pass-through entities should use the sole-proprietor estimate as a rougher proxy.
Effective deduction rate
21.00% Calculated
Headline marginal rate 21.00%.
Depreciation
5 years, straight-line Assumption
Residual value
$810 (30%) Assumption
Extrapolated from the three-year curve.
Electricity
$0.140/kWh Assumption
Average power draw
27 W Calculated
Load 105 W for 20% of powered hours, idle 7 W for the rest — a machine that is on is not generating tokens the whole time.
Investment allowances
§179 100.0% Official spec
Worth $567 in total — first-year expensing that replaces later tax depreciation.
Cost of capital
$5.85/month Assumption
- VAT rate: No US federal VAT · verified 2026-09-07
- Marginal tax rate: IRS Publication 542 — Corporations · verified 2026-09-07
- VAT recoverable fraction: site assumption · verified 2026-09-07
- Useful life: IRS Publication 946 — How To Depreciate Property · verified 2026-09-07
- Electricity price: Site assumption · verified 2026-09-07
Assumes the machine generates tokens 20% of its 176 powered hours per month. Cost per token scales inversely with this number — halve the utilisation and the cost per token doubles.
Federal planning estimate only, not tax advice. State and local income tax, sales/use tax and incentives are excluded. It assumes 100% business use, a Section 179 election, enough business income to use it, and that the full annual limit remains available.
Efficiency metrics
Decode per $1,000 spent
53.6 t/s
Calculated purchase price only
Decode per $100/month
509.0 t/s
Calculated after-tax ownership cost
Tokens per joule
5.44
Calculated same as tokens/s per watt
USD per 1M output tokens
$1.55
Calculated at 20% utilisation
Local versus hosted APIs
| Hosted model | USD/1M output | Break-even | API at your volume | Verdict | Comparison type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.8 Flash Alibaba Cloud | $0.42 | 18.5M/mo | $28 | About equal | Different model |
| DeepSeek-V4.1 Flash DeepSeek | $0.60 | 15.8M/mo | $33 | Local cheaper | Different model |
| DeepSeek-V4 Pro DeepSeek | $1.98 | 3.9M/mo | $133 | Local cheaper | Different model |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro (Together) Together AI | $4.40 | 1.3M/mo | $389 | Local cheaper | Different model |
| GLM-5.3 Z.ai | $4.40 | 1.8M/mo | $286 | Local cheaper | Different model |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 Anthropic | $5.00 | 2.2M/mo | $238 | Local cheaper | Different model |
Different-model comparison: the hosted model is not the model you would run locally. Treat this as a workload-quality trade-off, not a direct economic equivalence — the frontier model may complete a task in fewer tokens, or complete tasks the local model cannot. Break-even is the monthly output volume at which API spend equals the $28/month economic cost of owning this machine, assuming 8 input tokens per output token. Hosted prices are published in USD. This table is the canonical US default.
Gemma 4 26B-A4B on other hardware
| Hardware | Decode | Price | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA DGX H200 (8x H200, 1,128 GB) | ~521–750 t/s | $359,430 * | Comfortable |
| Quad RTX 5090 workstation (4x 32 GB) | ~281–404 t/s | $12,611 * | Comfortable |
| RTX 5090 workstation (1x 32 GB) | ~270–388 t/s | $3,332 * | Comfortable |
| Lenovo ThinkStation PX (4x RTX PRO 6000, 384 GB) | ~259–372 t/s | $58,553 * | Comfortable |
| Dual RTX 5090 workstation (2x 32 GB) | ~216–311 t/s | $5,854 * | Comfortable |
| Dell Precision 7960 Rack (2x RTX PRO 6000, 192 GB) | ~203–293 t/s | $36,663 * | Comfortable |
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