M3 Pro 18GB vs M5 Max 48GB for local LLMs
1 report on the M3 Pro 18GB and 66 on the M5 Max 48GB
Which is faster for local LLMs?
On Qwen3 8B at 4-bit, the M3 Pro 18GB has 25.2 generation tokens/s (one run); the M5 Max 48GB has 104.2 generation tokens/s (2 runs); prompt processing 2947.6 tokens/s (2 runs). Those are community reports whose engines and settings differ, so the gap is a rough sign, not a controlled measure of the two cards. Memory bandwidth, which caps how fast a card can write, is 4.0x higher on the M5 Max 48GB (154 GB/s on the M3 Pro 18GB, 614 on the M5 Max 48GB).
- Memory
- 18GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 154 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- 7.4 TFLOPS
- Reports
- 1
- Memory
- 48GB unified
- Memory bandwidth
- 614 GB/s
- FP16 compute
- not on record
- Reports
- 66
Measured on both
Generation and prompt processing speeds from plain runs (one device, one request, no speculative decoding, the whole model in the device's memory) of the same model size at the same bit class. Each side shows the engines and reported context behind its median. Context can mean a configured window or prompt depth, so these are community comparisons with differing settings. How to read these
| Model | M3 Pro 18GB | M5 Max 48GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3 8B4-bit | 25.2one runllama.cpp1K context | 104.22 runsPP 2947.6 (2 runs)llama.cpp, MLXcontext not stated |
Estimated by the calculator
The quant the calculator recommends for each card and its estimated speed at a 32,768-token context with 32 GB of system RAM, from memory bandwidth and the model's shape. Where a model was also measured above, the measurement wins.
| Model | M3 Pro 18GB | M5 Max 48GB |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen3 8B | 33.8 t/sQ3_K_M | 30.5 t/sFP16 |
| Qwen3.8 27B | doesn't fit at these settings | 22.3 t/sQ6_K |
| Qwen3.8 125B · 6B active | doesn't fit at these settings | doesn't fit at these settings |
| Qwen3.6 35B · 3B active | doesn't fit at these settings | 88.4 t/sQ5_K_M |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 284B · 13B active | doesn't fit at these settings | doesn't fit at these settings |
| Qwen3.6 27B | doesn't fit at these settings | 22.3 t/sQ6_K |
| Gemma 4 26B · 4B active | 35.1 t/sQ2_K | 43.2 t/sQ8_0 |
Change the context, RAM or model in the calculator: M3 Pro 18GB · M5 Max 48GB
Every report on each card, with its source: M3 Pro 18GB · M5 Max 48GB