Apple Silicon for local LLMs
Apple machines are ranked separately because unified memory changes the question: there is no VRAM ceiling to fit under, only a price and a bandwidth limit.
| # | Hardware | VRAM | Read tok/s | Power | Full rig | Cost/M tok | Payback |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mac Studio M5 Ultra 96 GB | 96 GB | 2,285 | 360 W | $5,499 | $0.097 | 987 days |
| 2 | MacBook Pro M5 Max 128 GB | 128 GB | 1,310 | 120 W | $6,699 | $0.103 | 1,178 days |
| 3 | Mac Studio M5 Ultra 256 GB | 256 GB | 2,856 | 360 W | $10,799 | $0.129 | 1,482 days |
| 4 | Mac Studio M5 Max 64 GB | 64 GB | 518 | 180 W | $3,799 | $0.143 | 1,653 days |
| 5 | MacBook Pro M5 Max 64 GB | 64 GB | 518 | 120 W | $5,099 | $0.169 | 2,028 days |
| 6 | Mac Studio M5 Max 128 GB | 128 GB | 518 | 180 W | $5,399 | $0.188 | 2,349 days |
| 7 | Mac mini M5 Pro 64 GB | 64 GB | 259 | 110 W | $2,899 | $0.207 | 2,691 days |
| 8 | Mac Studio M4 Max 128 GB | 128 GB | 447 | 145 W | $6,500 | $0.241 | 3,111 days |
| 9 | Mac Studio M3 Ultra 512 GB | 512 GB | 480 | 330 W | $9,499 | $0.548 | 15,577 days |
What these lists do not cover
- Unified memory is shared with the OS and every open app, so the usable ceiling is lower than the listed size. Bandwidth, not capacity, is usually the limit.
- All figures are single-stream measurements on one workload. Multi-user serving, fine-tuning and server parts behave differently.