How fast does Llama 3.1 8B run on iPhone?
On an iPhone Air (A19, iOS 26.6.1), Llama 3.1 8B generated 7.6 tokens per second in Pocket AI Lab 1.1.0, averaged over 3 runs of 200 tokens (± 3.8).
On the standard llama-bench style probe it read a 512-token prompt at about 42 tok/s and generated 128 tokens at 4.5 tok/s. Cold load took 2.7 s and the process peaked at 5,121 MB. The phone heated up during this run and decode speed dropped 66% between repetitions, so on a cool phone it can be faster.
How much memory and storage does Llama 3.1 8B need?
The catalog budgets 4.7 GB of RAM and 4.9 GB of storage for the 4bit build of Llama 3.1 8B. The measured peak footprint on iPhone Air was 5,121 MB.
Its backend copies weights into the app's memory, so the app checks it against the per-app limit iOS enforces. On a 6 GB iPhone that limit is much lower than 6 GB.
Which iPhones can run Llama 3.1 8B?
Llama 3.1 8B runs on iPhones with 8 GB of RAM or more.
| RAM | iPhones | Pocket AI Lab |
|---|---|---|
| 3–4 GB | iPhone 11, 11 Pro, 12, 12 mini, 13, 13 mini, SE (2nd and 3rd gen) | Not measured yet |
| 6 GB | iPhone 12 Pro, 13 Pro, 14, 14 Plus, 14 Pro, 15, 15 Plus | ✗ Too big |
| 8 GB | iPhone 15 Pro, 16, 16 Plus, 16 Pro, 16e, 17, 17e | ✓ Runs |
| 12 GB | iPhone 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max, iPhone Air | ✓ Runs |
Based on the memory budgets the app measures on each class of iPhone (October 2026). Before downloading, the app checks your exact phone and only offers what fits.
What can Llama 3.1 8B do in Pocket AI Lab?
It's a text model for chat, drafting, summaries and quick questions, fully offline once downloaded.
How did Llama 3.1 8B score on the quality suite?
It passed 68 of 118 tasks, a score of 57.6 out of 100 on suite v3.
Tasks are graded by deterministic checks (exact numbers, regex, word counts, valid JSON), with greedy decoding. See the method.
All runs of Llama 3.1 8B
| Model | Gen tok/s | pp512 / tg128 | Load s | Peak MB | Score | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Llama 3.1 8B | 8.2 ± 3.8 | ~43 / 5.0 | 3.1 | 5,137 | 80.4 | 2026-09-03 |
| Llama 3.1 8B | 7.6 ± 3.8 | ~42 / 4.5 | 2.7 | 5,121 | 57.6 | 2026-10-22 |
Other Llama models in the catalog
- Llama 3.2 3B, MLX, 4bit, 23.9 tok/s (throttled)
- Llama 3.2 3B (GGUF), llama.cpp, Q4_K_M, 26.9 tok/s
How do I install Llama 3.1 8B?
Open the Models tab in Pocket AI Lab and tap Llama 3.1 8B. The app checks it against your phone's memory, downloads 4.9 GB from Hugging Face and it's ready for offline chat.