Best Local LLM Models 2026: Verified Sizes, Hardware and Use Cases
Choosing a local LLM starts with the exact model identity and the resources it needs. This guide covers the families discussed in the original article and explains how to evaluate their fit. It does not present a locally measured benchmark leaderboard. Correction — October 7, 2026: Llama 3.3 was incorrectly described as an 8B model, and Mistral Small 3 as a 7B model. Their correct sizes are 70B and 24B. The previous hardware-speed table, blanket privacy claims and inconsistent cloud-cost calculations have also been removed or corrected. ...