Cloud AI is convenient. Local AI is yours. Here's what actually works in 2026.
Why Go Local?
- Privacy: Your data never leaves your machine
- Cost: No API bills
- Latency: Instant responses for cached models
- Customization: Fine-tune for your use case
Hardware Requirements
| Model Size | VRAM Needed | Example GPU |
|---|---|---|
| 7B | 8GB | RTX 3070 |
| 13B | 16GB | RTX 4080 |
| 34B | 24GB | RTX 4090 |
| 70B | 48GB+ | 2x RTX 4090 |
Top Models
1. Llama 3.2 (70B)
Meta's latest is genuinely impressive. With proper quantization (Q4_K_M), it runs on a single 4090 and rivals GPT-4 on most tasks.
2. Mistral Large
The European powerhouse. Excellent for European languages and surprisingly good at code.
3. Qwen 2.5 (72B)
Alibaba's best model excels at structured output and function calling. Criminally underrated.
4. DeepSeek Coder V2
The best local model for pure coding tasks. Outperforms GPT-4 on HumanEval benchmarks.
Recommended Stack
# Install Ollama (easiest option)
curl -fsSL https://ollama.ai/install.sh | sh
# Pull a model
ollama pull llama3.2:70b-instruct-q4_K_M
# Run it
ollama run llama3.2:70b-instruct-q4_K_M
Verdict
Best All-Rounder: Llama 3.2 70B
Best for Code: DeepSeek Coder V2
Best for Non-English: Qwen 2.5