MiniMax M3.1 Flash: VRAM requirements by quant
Key facts
MiniMax M3.1 Flash needs about 251.2 GB at standard quality (Q4, estimate).
Checked . unsloth UD-Q4_K_XL GGUF.
MiniMax M3.1 Flash is a very large open AI model. It needs about 251 GB of memory at standard quality, more than any PC or Mac we track. Models this size usually run on rented servers.
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Test 10 open LLMs free in your browser before downloading 249 GB for MiniMax M3.1 Flash
Open full 8-model playground ↗Before downloading 249.4 GB of UD-Q4_K_XL weights for MiniMax M3.1 Flash (428B total, 23B active, MiniMax Community Licence with commercial-use conditions), you can test 10 open LLMs free in your browser at https://localllmrig.com/ with no login and 0 GB of local VRAM. Unsloth's 2-bit dynamic GGUF is 143.9 GB and runs in about 150 GB of RAM or unified memory by Unsloth's own figure. The prompts below run Recursive Flint and Gemma 4 31B. MiniMax M3.1 Flash is not one of the free models.
Test 10 open LLMs free in your browser →https://localllmrig.com/can-i-run/minimax-m3.1-flash
Click a starter prompt below or type your own question to watch Recursive Flint stream side by side against Gemma 4 31B right on this page:
Memory needed
About 251 GB
At standard quality, with room for a conversation of about 12 pages.
Cheapest machine that runs it
None of ours
It needs more than any PC or Mac we track.
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Can a PC or Mac run MiniMax M3.1 Flash?
None of the PCs or Macs we track can hold MiniMax M3.1 Flash: it needs about 251 GB. Models this size usually run on rented servers. What renting costs
Speeds and memory are our estimate from the hardware specs, not a measured test. Prices are dated and may change. How we calculate
Memory at each quality level
A lower quality level makes the model smaller, so it fits on a smaller machine. Standard (Q4) is what most people run.
| Quality | Memory needed |
|---|---|
| Q4 · standard (smallest that keeps quality) | 251.2 GB |
| Q5 · a bit sharper, a bit bigger | 305.7 GB |
| Q8 · near full quality, almost twice Q4 | 459.8 GB |
| FP16 · full quality, over three times Q4 | 857.8 GB |
With a conversation of 8,192 tokens · about 12 pages of text.
Sources and method
At standard quality: 249.4 GB for the model itself (a measured file), 1.0 GB for a conversation of 8,192 tokens, and 0.8 GB for the software.
Size source: huggingface.co/MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-M3.1-Flash. 428B parameters in total, 23B used for each word. The memory counts the total.
MiniMax's open-weights multimodal mixture of experts: about 428B total, 23B active, context up to 1,048,576 tokens. Open weights under the MiniMax Community Licence. Non-commercial use is free; commercial use needs a credit and a notice to MiniMax, or written permission above US$20 million yearly revenue. This is not an Apache-2.0 licence. On 26 Oct 2026 Unsloth published dynamic GGUFs (https://huggingface.co/unsloth/MiniMax-M3.1-Flash-GGUF, guide https://unsloth.ai/docs/models/minimax-m3.1-flash). UD-Q2_K_XL is 143.9 GB. Unsloth says that 2-bit file runs in about 150 GB of RAM or unified memory, with 91.5% top-1 token agreement, for a 16K context and one slot (Unsloth, with day-zero weights from MiniMax). A 192 GB, 256 GB, or 512 GB Mac Studio, a dual DGX Spark, or an EPYC server with 256 GB of DDR4 or DDR5 is the class that figure points at. UD-Q4_K_XL is 249.4 GB. Unsloth's planning figure for that 4-bit file is 256 GB or more of unified memory, which also covers an eight-node DGX Spark. Official NVFP4 and MXFP8 weights are 252.42 GB and are not a GGUF. Text-only MLX builds remain listed, the smallest of those at 186.49 GB. Our conversation-memory estimate keeps a full cache for every layer; the sparse indexer cache is not modelled.
Licence
Commercial use: yes, with limits
Open weights. Non-commercial use is free. Commercial use needs a credit and a notice to MiniMax, or written permission above US$20M yearly revenue.
Licence: minimax-community · checked 24 Oct 2026
Our reading of the licence, not legal advice.
Will MiniMax M3.1 Flash run on my graphics card?
Common questions
- How much memory does MiniMax M3.1 Flash need?
- About 251.2 GB at standard quality (Q4) with a conversation of 8,192 tokens: 249.4 GB for the model itself, 1.0 GB for the conversation and 0.8 GB for the software. The model size is a measured file; the conversation and software parts are our estimate.
- Does MiniMax M3.1 Flash fit on a single 24 GB graphics card?
- Not in full. It needs about 251.2 GB, and a 24 GB card leaves about 23.4 GB usable.
- Are the speeds measured?
- We do not show a speed for this model. It is a mixture-of-experts model, and our estimate would not be reliable for that design.
- Can I run MiniMax M3.1 Flash on 24GB?
- Not in full. MiniMax M3.1 Flash (428B total, 23B active, parameter count is an estimate) needs about 251.2 GB at the standard quality (our estimate, 249.4 GB for the weights + 1.01 GB conversation memory + 0.80 GB working space), and a 24 GB card leaves about 23.4 GB usable. With the measured oQ4e-mtp MLX build the total is 250.6 GB (248.77 GB file).
- Can I run MiniMax M3.1 Flash on a 128GB Mac?
- No, by our estimate. MiniMax M3.1 Flash needs about 251.2 GB at the standard quality and 188.3 GB even at Text-3bit (186.49 GB measured MLX), while Mac Studio M4 Max 128GB and Mac Studio M5 Max 128GB leave about 96.0 GB usable of 128 GB.
- Which Mac or server can run MiniMax M3.1 Flash locally?
- The smallest download on our list, Text-3bit (186.49 GB measured MLX, 188.3 GB total estimate) at 8,192 tokens, fits on Mac Studio M5 Ultra 256GB (192.0 GB usable of 256 GB, €12,500 / $11,565, price unverified). The 4-bit MLX builds (oQ4e-mtp (248.77 GB measured MLX, 250.6 GB total estimate) and Text-4bit (248.37 GB measured MLX, 250.2 GB total estimate)) are larger than the 192.0 GB usable on the largest Mac on our list (Mac Studio M5 Ultra 256GB). The model notes record official NVFP4 and MXFP8 weights of 252.42 GB, which are not a GGUF. On 26 Oct 2026 Unsloth published dynamic GGUFs. UD-Q2_K_XL (143.9 GB measured GGUF, 145.7 GB total estimate) is the 2-bit file. Unsloth says it runs in about 150 GB of RAM or unified memory, with 91.5% top-1 token agreement, for a 16K context and one slot (Unsloth, with day-zero weights from MiniMax; not a measurement on this site). A 192 GB, 256 GB, or 512 GB Mac Studio, a dual DGX Spark, or an EPYC server with 256 GB of DDR4 or DDR5 is the class that figure points at. UD-Q4_K_XL (249.4 GB measured GGUF, 251.2 GB total estimate) is the 4-bit dynamic file. Unsloth's planning figure for it is 256 GB or more of unified memory, which also covers an eight-node DGX Spark.
- Can I test MiniMax M3.1 Flash or comparable open models online in my browser first?
- MiniMax M3.1 Flash is not one of the 10 free open models (26B to 280B). You can test those free models, including Gemma 4 31B (https://localllmrig.com/can-i-run/gemma-4-31b), Gemma 4 26B A4B (https://localllmrig.com/can-i-run/gemma-4-26b-a4b), NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (https://localllmrig.com/can-i-run/nemotron-3.5-lightning), Laguna S 2.1 (https://localllmrig.com/can-i-run/laguna-s-2.1), NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Super VL (https://localllmrig.com/can-i-run/nemotron-3.5-super-vl), Recursive Flint (https://localllmrig.com/can-i-run/flint), for $0 with no account at https://localllmrig.com/ or in the inline test box on https://localllmrig.com/can-i-run/minimax-m3.1-flash. MiniMax M3.1 Flash (428B, 23B active) is in the chat catalog and is not one of the free models, so trying it needs a pass at https://localllmrig.com/. MiniMax M3 (428B, 23B active) is in the chat catalog and is not one of the free models, so trying it needs a pass at https://localllmrig.com/.
- How fast is MiniMax M3.1 Flash on an RTX 5090?
- We don't give a speed for this model yet. This model only uses part of itself for each word (23B active of 428B total, a mixture of experts), and our speed estimate does not handle that yet.
- What is the license and maximum context length of MiniMax M3.1 Flash?
- MiniMax M3.1 Flash is an open-weights model (text+image+video in, text out) and a mixture of experts, released 17 Oct 2026, with a maximum context length of 1,048,576 tokens (about 1,573 pages of text). Licence: minimax-community. Open weights. Non-commercial use is free. Commercial use needs a credit and a notice to MiniMax, or written permission above US$20M yearly revenue.