AU price tracker › Best Mac for local LLMs
Best Mac for local LLMs in Australia
Prices checked 21 Oct 2026, 10:07 am AEST · how we check
7 Mac configs are in stock today, from A$1,449 (Mac mini M6 (12-core GPU) 16GB) to A$11,449 (Mac Studio M5 Ultra (80-core GPU) 256GB). The cheapest holds models up to Gemma 4 12B; for anything over about 18GB you need a Mac Studio.
Quick picks
Every Mac we price, cheapest first
Mac Studio M5 Max (40-core GPU) 48GB+
Apple prices are Apple AU's "From" price for each base configuration; upgrades cost more.
FAQ
What's the cheapest Mac for running local LLMs in Australia?
The Mac mini M6 (12-core GPU) 16GB at A$1,449 (Apple AU). With 12 GB usable for models it fits 9 of the 32 models we track at 4-bit, up to Gemma 4 12B.
Which Mac can run DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (MoE)?
None of the Macs we price holds it at Q4_K_M.
Mac mini or Mac Studio for local AI?
The Mac mini tops out at 24GB in the configs we price; the Mac Studio starts at 36GB and has 1.5–3.9× the top Mac mini's memory bandwidth, so it runs bigger models faster. See Mac mini vs Mac Studio.
How much of a Mac's memory can a model use?
By default macOS lets the GPU use about 75% of unified memory, which is what we count as usable. It can be raised manually.
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