Will it run? / Mistral small 22B / Mac mini M4 (16GB)

Can the Mac mini M4 (16GB) run Mistral small 22B?

Won't fit No. Mistral small 22B needs about 14.5 GB of memory, and the Mac mini M4 (16GB) can give a model about 10.7 GB. You'd need a machine with more memory, or a smaller model.

–estimated tokens/sec
14.5 GBmemory needed
10.7 GBavailable to the model
120 GB/smemory bandwidth

Check the Mac mini M4 (16GB) price →

How we got this number

Each generated token reads the whole model from memory once: 13 GB. The Mac mini M4 (16GB) moves 120 GB/s, so the ceiling is 9.2 tokens/sec. Real machines reach a fraction of that ceiling; we use 80%, calibrated against a measured Mac run. Send us your real numbers and we'll replace the estimate.

Faster machines for Mistral small 22B

Mac Studio M5 Ultra (96GB)76 tok/s$5,499Check price →
Mac Studio M5 Ultra (256GB)76 tok/s$9,499Check price →
Mac Studio M5 Max (40-core GPU, 64GB)38 tok/s$3,799Check price →
Mac mini M5 Pro (24GB)19 tok/s$1,699Check price →

Other models on the Mac mini M4 (16GB)

lfm 2.5 8B (A1B)Fast78 tok/s
Qwen2.5-VL 3BFast30 tok/s
Gemma 3 4BFast29 tok/s
Qwen 3-VL 4BFast29 tok/s
translateGemma 4BFast29 tok/s
Qwen3.5 4BFast28 tok/s