Qwen3 8B
Alibaba · Qwen
One of the most-downloaded mid-size AI models on HuggingFace in 2026, with tens of millions of downloads. Qwen3 8B outperforms the previous Qwen2.5 14B on most benchmarks, supports hybrid thinking mode and tool calling, and runs on any GPU with 6 GB VRAM. Apache 2.0 license — fully commercial.
Params
8B
License
Apache 2.0
Context
128K
Min VRAM
5 GB
Min RAM
8 GB
Tier
Light
Run locally with Ollama
ollama run qwen3:8bOnce running, Ollama exposes an OpenAI-compatible endpoint at localhost:11434/v1.
Will it run on my hardware?
Qwen3 8B needs about 5 GB of fast memory at Q4. Here is what in our hardware database clears that bar.
Runs at full speed · 12
Runs, but slower on shared memory · 3
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Specifications
| Parameters | 8B |
|---|---|
| Context window | 128K |
| License | Apache 2.0 |
| Min VRAM (Q4) | 5 GB |
| Min RAM | 8 GB |
| Recommended tier | Light |
| Best for | codingchatreasoningtool use |
Variants on Ollama
Ollama serves the Q4_K_M quantization by default. Higher-precision tags exist for users with more memory.
Qwen3 8B
ollama run qwen3:8bollama pull qwen3:q8_0ollama pull qwen3:fp16Exact quantization tags vary per model — run ollama show qwen3 or check the tags page for the full list.
Popularity trend (illustrative)
Illustrative adoption trend, not actual download counts. We do not publish a download number for any model because we have no honest source for it.
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