GLM ties Kimi K3 at the top of the open-weight rankings, but 'run it locally' depends on which GLM — from the 106B Air that fits one card to the 744B GLM-5 that needs a 256GB Mac or the cloud. The honest map, with real numbers.
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GLM, from the Chinese lab Zhipu (Z.ai), sits at the top of the open-weight rankings — GLM-5.3 ties Kimi K3 at the top of the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (score 60) among open models as of September 2026 — but 'can I run it locally?' has wildly different answers depending on which GLM. The 106B GLM-4.5-Air fits a big single card; the 744B GLM-5 needs a 256GB Mac or a cloud rental. Here's the honest map of which GLM runs on what, with real numbers from the model cards. Sourced, no hands-on claims.
Because GLM's bigger models are mixture-of-experts, all the weights must sit in memory even though only the active experts run per token — so the constraint is capacity, and there are three ways to get it. Unified memory (a 128GB Strix Halo mini-PC or a Mac Studio) holds GLM-4.5-Air comfortably and GLM-5's 2-bit quant on a 256GB Mac, slowly. Multi-GPU (two or more 80GB cards, or MoE-offload to system RAM) is the other route, and a DGX Spark-class box handles the mid tier. Cloud is the flexible option when you don't want to buy a big-memory machine for an occasional run — rent a card that fits for cents to a few dollars an hour.
No big-memory box? Rent a card that fits GLMReferral link
Yes, if you match the version to your hardware. GLM-4.5-Air (106B, ~60GB at 4-bit) runs on a single 80GB card or a 128GB unified-memory box. GLM-4.6 (2-bit ~135GB) and GLM-5 (2-bit ~241GB) need a large-memory machine — a 256GB Mac Studio, a multi-GPU rig, or the cloud. All figures are from the model cards and Unsloth's local-run docs (24 Sep 2026).
Which is the most 'runnable' GLM?
GLM-4.5-Air. At 106B total / 12B active it quantises to about 60GB at 4-bit, so it fits a single 80GB or 96GB card, or a 128GB unified-memory mini-PC or Mac, with room for context. It's the version most people can actually run without a big-memory rig.
How much memory does GLM-5 need?
GLM-5 is 744B total / 40B active. Unsloth's 2-bit dynamic GGUF is about 241GB, which fits a 256GB unified-memory Mac (slowly), or a single 24GB card plus 256GB of system RAM with MoE offloading; the 1-bit quant is ~176GB. For usable speed most people rent multiple data-centre GPUs instead.
