MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB vs Mac mini M4 32GB for Local LLMs

The MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB has about 233% more memory bandwidth (400 vs 120 GB/s). Batch-1 decode tracks bandwidth closely, so a model that fits both cards should decode roughly 233% faster on the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB. The MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB fits more of the catalog at Q4/8K — 47 vs 38 of 61 models (128 vs 32 GB VRAM). Largest model that fits the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB but not the Mac mini M4 32GB: DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B). MSRP is $4,199 for the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB vs $999 for the Mac mini M4 32GB. MSRP is a launch list price, not live retail — Amazon prices move; click through for the current price. In the Q4/8K head-to-head below (47 shared models), the MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB posts the higher tok/s in 47 rows vs 0. Methodology.

Spec comparison

	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB	Mac mini M4 32GB
Vendor	Apple	Apple
VRAM	128 GB	32 GB
Memory type	LPDDR5	LPDDR5X
Memory bandwidth	400 GB/s	120 GB/s
TDP	140 W	155 W
MSRP (list)	$4,199	$999
Buy	Search Amazon (affiliate)	Search Amazon (affiliate)

MSRP is the launch list price, not live retail. Buy links are Amazon affiliate links — the price after you click is the live price.

Q4 / 8K head-to-head — top 15 of 47 shared models

Model	Params (B)	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB tok/s	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB fits	Mac mini M4 32GB tok/s	Mac mini M4 32GB fits	Winner
Qwen3-0.6B	0.8	318.2 est.	Yes	95.5 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
gemma-3-1b-it	1.0	254.5 est.	Yes	76.4 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct	1.2	212.1 est.	Yes	63.6 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Qwen3-1.7B	2.0	127.3 est.	Yes	38.2 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B	30.5	84.8 est.	Yes	25.5 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct	30.5	84.8 est.	Yes	25.5 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
GLM-4.7-Flash	31.2	84.8 est.	Yes	25.5 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507	30.5	84.8 est.	Yes	25.5 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct	81.3	84.8 est.	Yes	34.7 est.	No	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Qwen3-Coder-Next	79.7	84.8 est.	Yes	36.1 est.	No	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	3.2	79.5 est.	Yes	41.3 measured	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
gpt-oss-20b	21.5	70.7 est.	Yes	21.2 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Phi-4-mini-instruct	3.8	67.0 est.	Yes	20.1 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
Phi-4-mini-reasoning	3.8	67.0 est.	Yes	20.1 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB
gemma-3-4b-it	4.3	65.3 est.	Yes	19.6 est.	Yes	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB

est. = bandwidth-based estimate; measured = curated real benchmark that overrides the estimate. Fits = weights + KV(8K) + 1 GB overhead ≤ 95% of VRAM.

Fit coverage at Q4 / 8K

	MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB	Mac mini M4 32GB
Catalog models that fit	47 of 61	38 of 61
Largest exclusive fit	DeepSeek-V4-Flash (158.1B)	—

MacBook Pro M3 Max 128GB details → · Mac mini M4 32GB details →