Recursive Flint at a glance
- Made by
- Recursive, United States
- Released
- October 21, 2026
- Parameters
- 39.8B, 2.5B active
- Context window
- 256K tokens
Recursive, United States · Released October 21, 2026New
Recursive Flint has 39.8B parameters (2.5B active per token). In BF16 its weights alone take 74.1 GiB; quantized to 4-bit, about 22.4 GiB. Each 32K-token request adds 0.91 GiB of KV cache. Cheapest way to run it today: 2 × RTX A4000 (16 GB) at $0.146 per hour.
Size your own setup in the calculator →Weights plus the KV cache of one request (BF16 cache), in GiB. Add 1 to 3 GiB for the inference engine itself.
| Weights format | Weights only | + 8K context | + 32K context | + 128K context | + 256K context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BF16 / FP16 | 74.1 | 74.4 | 75.0 | 77.6 | 81.1 |
| FP8 / INT8 | 37.6 | 37.9 | 38.5 | 41.2 | 44.7 |
| 4-bit (GGUF Q4_K_M) | 22.4 | 22.7 | 23.3 | 26.0 | 29.5 |
Fewest GPUs that fit the weights plus one 8K-token request. Data-center GPUs use vLLM (90% of memory usable), the others llama.cpp. Several GPUs split the model with tensor or pipeline parallelism.
| GPU | BF16 / FP16 | 8-bit | 4-bit |
|---|---|---|---|
| GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| GeForce RTX 5090 32 GB | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Mac M5 Max 128 GB 96 GB usable | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Ryzen AI Max+ 395 128 GB 96 GB usable | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| NVIDIA H100 80 GB | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| NVIDIA H200 141 GB | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| NVIDIA B200 (HGX) 180 GB | 1 | 1 | 1 |
8-bit: FP8 with vLLM (INT8 on GPUs without FP8), Q8_0 with llama.cpp. 4-bit: AWQ / GPTQ with vLLM, Q4_K_M with llama.cpp, both counted at the Q4_K_M size.
For each GPU: the fewest cards that fit Recursive Flint with one 8K-token request, the most faithful weight format at that count, and the cheapest on-demand price (2026-10-22).
| Setup | Per hour | Weights | Provider | Per month | Rent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 × RTX A4000 16 GB | $0.146 | Q4_K_M | Vast.ai | $106.58 | Rent 2 × RTX A4000 on Vast.ai (opens in a new tab) → |
| 2 × GeForce RTX 3090 24 GB | $0.278 | Q8_0 | Vast.ai | $202.94 | Rent 2 × GeForce RTX 3090 on Vast.ai (opens in a new tab) → |
| 1 × RTX A6000 48 GB | $0.336 | Q8_0 | Vast.ai | $245.28 | Rent 1 × RTX A6000 on Vast.ai (opens in a new tab) → |
| 2 × RTX A5000 24 GB | $0.402 | Q8_0 | Vast.ai | $293.46 | Rent 2 × RTX A5000 on Vast.ai (opens in a new tab) → |
| 1 × NVIDIA A100 40GB | $0.441 | 4-bit | Vast.ai | $321.93 | Rent 1 × NVIDIA A100 40GB on Vast.ai (opens in a new tab) → |
| 1 × GeForce RTX 5090 32 GB | $0.441 | Q4_K_M | Vast.ai | $321.93 | Rent 1 × GeForce RTX 5090 on Vast.ai (opens in a new tab) → |
| 1 × NVIDIA L40 48 GB | $0.457 | 4-bit | Vast.ai | $333.61 | Rent 1 × NVIDIA L40 on Vast.ai (opens in a new tab) → |
| 2 × RTX 2000 Ada 16 GB | $0.480 | Q4_K_M | RunPod | $350.40 | Rent 2 × RTX 2000 Ada on RunPod (opens in a new tab) → |
On-demand prices from AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, RunPod, Vast.ai, Oracle Cloud, OVHcloud, Scaleway, Verda, Akash and UpCloud, checked every hour. Serving many users needs more KV cache, so more memory: size it in the calculator. Some links are affiliate links: StudioTV may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.
AWS, Google Cloud and UpCloud prices: Spare Cores (opens in a new tab), CC BY-SA 4.0 (opens in a new tab), shared under the same license.
Architecture: MoE 256 experts + 1 shared · 14 full-attention layers + 35 sliding-window layers (513 tokens), GQA 4 KV × 128. Its KV cache is 3.4× smaller than if every layer used full attention, because most layers only keep a short window of recent tokens. Only 2.5B parameters are active per token, but all 40B must sit in memory: VRAM depends on the total, speed on the active part.
| Context per request | BF16 cache | FP8 cache |
|---|---|---|
| 8K tokens | 0.25 GiB | 0.13 GiB |
| 32K tokens | 0.91 GiB | 0.45 GiB |
| 128K tokens | 3.53 GiB | 1.77 GiB |
| 256K tokens | 7.03 GiB | 3.52 GiB |
In BF16 the weights alone take 74.1 GiB (80 GB). In FP8 that is 37.6 GiB, and about 22.4 GiB with 4-bit quantization (Q4_K_M). Each request then adds KV cache: 0.25 GiB at 8K tokens and 0.91 GiB at 32K (BF16 cache).
No. Even in 4-bit it needs 2 RTX 4090s. In 4-bit it fits on a single GeForce RTX 5090 (32 GB).
Yes. In Q4_K_M (22.7 GiB with an 8K-token context) it fits on one RTX 5090, with llama.cpp.
Yes. In 4-bit (Q4_K_M with llama.cpp) it needs a Mac with 48 GB of unified memory or more, of which macOS gives the GPU about 36 GB, for one request with an 8K-token context. In 8-bit (Q8_0) it needs 64 GB or more.
Yes. In BF16 (74.4 GiB with an 8K-token context) it fits on a DGX Spark (128 GB) and on a Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with 128 GB, whose GPU gets up to 96 GB, with llama.cpp and one request.
On 2026-10-22, the cheapest on-demand setup is 2 × RTX A4000 (16 GB) with Q4_K_M weights on Vast.ai, at $0.146 per hour (about $106.58 per month). Next: 2 × GeForce RTX 3090 (24 GB) with Q8_0 weights on Vast.ai, at $0.278 per hour. Sized for one 8K-token request; prices are checked every hour.
With one request and an 8K-token context: 2 in BF16, 1 in FP8 and 1 in 4-bit (vLLM, 90% of memory usable). Serving many users at once needs more memory for their KV caches: the calculator sizes that for you.
For a model card or a README: the 4-bit size and the smallest GPU it fits on, linked to this page. Data as JSON: /api/models/flint.json.
[](https://studiotvai.com/vram-requirements/flint)Same family (sliding-window attention): Gemma 2 9B · Gemma 3 4B · Gemma 4 12B · Gemma 4 31B · Gemma 4 26B-A4B · gpt-oss 20B · gpt-oss 120B · Llama 4 Scout 17B-16E · Llama 4 Maverick 17B-128E · Kolibri-1 · Nemotron Labs Dory 1.0 4B · Step 3.5 Flash · Muse Glimmer 30B · Humanizer · Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B · Spark-X2.5 4B · Ministral 8B · Gemma 4 E4B · Gemma 4 E2B · Unlimited-OCR · Spark-X2.6 4B
Llama 3.1 8B · Llama 3 8B · Llama 3.2 3B · Nemotron 3.5 Parse · Gemma 2 9B · Gemma 3 4B · LLaVA 1.6 Mistral 7B · Mistral Small 3.2 24B · Qwen3 32B · Llama 3.3 70B · Llama 3.1 405B · Hy-Memory 30B-A3B · Xing4.0 29B-A4B · Qwen3.5 4B · MiniCPM-V-4.7 1B · Raon-1 mini preview · Qwen3.5 9B · Qwen3.8 27B · Qwen3.6 35B-A3B · Qwen3.5 122B-A10B · Qwen3.8-Flash-Next · LFM2.5 8B-A1B · LFM2 24B-A2B · Gemma 4 12B · Gemma 4 31B · Gemma 4 26B-A4B · gpt-oss 20B · gpt-oss 120B · Llama 4 Scout 17B-16E · Llama 4 Maverick 17B-128E · Kolibri-1 · Nemotron Labs Dory 1.0 4B · Step 3.5 Flash · Muse Glimmer 30B · Nemotron 3 Nano 30B-A3B · Nemotron 3 Super 120B-A12B · Nemotron 3.5 Super VL 120B-A12B · Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B · MiniMax M2.7 · DeepSeek R1 · Kimi K2.6 · GLM-5.3 · GLM-5.3-Flash · DeepSeek V4 Flash · DeepSeek V4 Pro · DeepSeek V4.1 Flash · MiMo-V2.6 Pro · MiMo-V2.6 Flash · Muse Spark Open · Beam 1.0 501B-A23B · Kimi K3 · Mistral Large 4 · Qwen3-Coder-Next 80B-A3B · Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B · Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B · DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp · Qwen3.8 2.4T-A95B · Ornith 1.5 397B · Ornith 1.5 35B-A3B · Ornith 1.5 9B · Atria Dawn Preview · Intern S2 397B · Clef · Clef Flash · D1 3B · Humanizer · JEV 27B VL · Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B · LightOnOCR-3 4B · Spark-X2.5 4B · Agnes-3.0-Qwen · Youtu-Parsing-Omni · Agnes-3.0-Flash · Mistral 7B v0.3 · Mistral Small 3.1 24B · Mistral Nemo · Ministral 8B · DeepSeek V3 · DeepSeek R1 Qwen3 8B · DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 32B · DeepSeek V3.1 · DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B · DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 7B · DeepSeek R1 Distill Llama 8B · Qwen3 4B · Qwen3 8B · Qwen2.5 7B · Qwen3 14B · Qwen2.5 3B · Qwen3.6 27B · Qwen3.5 27B · Qwen2.5-Coder 7B · Qwen2.5 32B · Qwen2.5-Coder 14B · Qwen3.5 35B-A3B · Qwen3 30B-A3B · Qwen2.5 14B · Qwen2.5-Coder 32B · Kimi K2.7 Code · Kimi K2.5 · Kimi K2 · GLM-5.2 · GLM-5.1 · GLM-5 · MiniMax M2.5 · MiniMax M2 · MiMo-V2.5 · Ornith-1.0 397B · Qwen2.5-Coder 3B · Qwen3 235B-A22B · Qwen3.5 397B-A17B · Gemma 4 E4B · Gemma 4 E2B · Nemotron 3 Nano 4B · Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B · MiniCPM-V-4.7 35B-A3B · LFM2.5 24B-A2B · GLM-4.7 · Qwen3-VL 8B · Qwen2.5-VL 7B · Qwen3-VL 4B · Qwen2.5-VL 3B · Qwen2.5-VL 32B · Qwen2-VL 7B · GLM-4.5-Air · GLM-4.5 · phi-4 · Phi-3.5-mini · Phi-4-mini · Phi-3-mini-128k · Unlimited-OCR · Ling-3.1-flash · Step 5 Preview · Hy3 · Ornith-1.5 122B · Spark-X2.6 4B · Sage-A1.5 · MLExpert · Agents-A1 4B · Ling-3.0-flash-Sante
Estimates, not guarantees: computed from the official config.json with the same engine as the LLM VRAM Calculator. Real usage depends on your engine version and settings.