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GLM-5.3 VRAM Requirements

Z.ai, China · Released August 25, 2026

GLM-5.3 has 753.3B parameters (40.3B active per token). In BF16 its weights alone take 1385 GiB; quantized to 4-bit, about 418 GiB. Each 32K-token request adds 2.83 GiB of KV cache. Cheapest way to run it today: 7 × NVIDIA A100 80GB at $6.54 per hour.

Size your own setup in the calculator →

VRAM by precision and context length

Weights plus the KV cache of one request (BF16 cache), in GiB. Add 1 to 3 GiB for the inference engine itself.

Weights formatWeights only+ 8K context+ 32K context+ 128K context+ 1M context
FP8 (native)694695697706785
BF16 / FP1613851385138713961475
FP8 / INT8694695697705785
4-bit (GGUF Q4_K_M)418419421429509

GLM-5.3 GGUF files

Exact size of each quantization in unsloth/GLM-5.3-GGUF (opens in a new tab), and the smallest GPU that runs it with llama.cpp, Ollama or LM Studio and an 8K-token context.

QuantizationFile sizeSmallest GPU
BF161404 GiBMore than 96 GB: see the calculator
Q8_0746 GiBMore than 96 GB: see the calculator
UD-Q6_K_XL637 GiBMore than 96 GB: see the calculator
UD-Q5_K_XL524 GiBMore than 96 GB: see the calculator
UD-Q4_K_XL435 GiBMore than 96 GB: see the calculator
UD-IQ4_XS340 GiBMore than 96 GB: see the calculator
UD-Q3_K_XL319 GiBMore than 96 GB: see the calculator
UD-IQ3_XXS262 GiBMore than 96 GB: see the calculator
UD-Q2_K_XL236 GiBMore than 96 GB: see the calculator
UD-IQ2_M222 GiBMore than 96 GB: see the calculator
UD-IQ1_M213 GiBMore than 96 GB: see the calculator
UD-IQ1_S202 GiBMore than 96 GB: see the calculator

Read every day from Hugging Face. Split files are added together; vision projectors are left out.

How many GPUs to run GLM-5.3

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.

GPUFP8 (native)BF16 / FP16FP8 / INT84-bit (GGUF Q4_K_M)
GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB48 (several servers)96 (several servers)48 (several servers)24 (several servers)
GeForce RTX 5090 32 GB32 (several servers)64 (several servers)32 (several servers)16 (several servers)
RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB816 (several servers)85
Mac M5 Max 128 GB 96 GB usable816 (several servers)85
NVIDIA H100 80 GB16 (several servers)24 (several servers)16 (several servers)7
NVIDIA H200 141 GB616 (several servers)64
NVIDIA B200 (HGX) 180 GB516 (several servers)53

Cheapest way to run GLM-5.3 today

For each GPU: the fewest cards that fit GLM-5.3 with one 8K-token request, the most faithful weight format at that count, and the cheapest on-demand price (2026-10-10).

On-demand prices from RunPod, Vast.ai, Verda and Azure, 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.

KV cache: how memory grows with context

Architecture: MoE 256 experts · MLA (512 + 64 latent) on 78 layers · sparse-attention indexer keys on 21. Its cache stays compact because MLA stores one compressed latent per token and layer instead of full keys and values. Only 40.3B parameters are active per token, but all 753B must sit in memory: VRAM depends on the total, speed on the active part.

Context per requestBF16 cacheFP8 cache
8K tokens0.71 GiB0.41 GiB
32K tokens2.83 GiB1.65 GiB
128K tokens11.3 GiB6.58 GiB
1M tokens90.5 GiB52.7 GiB

GLM-5.3 VRAM FAQ

How much VRAM does GLM-5.3 need?

In BF16 the weights alone take 1385 GiB (1487 GB). In FP8 that is 694 GiB, and about 418 GiB with 4-bit quantization (Q4_K_M); the official FP8 checkpoint is 694 GiB. Each request then adds KV cache: 0.71 GiB at 8K tokens and 2.83 GiB at 32K (BF16 cache).

Can GLM-5.3 run on a single RTX 4090 (24 GB)?

No. Even in 4-bit it needs 24 (several servers) RTX 4090s. In 4-bit it needs 7 H100 GPUs.

What is the cheapest way to run GLM-5.3?

On 2026-10-10, the cheapest on-demand setup is 7 × NVIDIA A100 80GB with 4-bit (GGUF Q4_K_M) weights on Vast.ai, at $6.54 per hour (about $4,772.74 per month). Next: 5 × RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell (96 GB) with 4-bit (GGUF Q4_K_M) weights on Vast.ai, at $6.67 per hour. Sized for one 8K-token request; prices are checked every hour.

How many H100 GPUs does GLM-5.3 need?

With one request and an 8K-token context: 24 (several servers) in BF16, 16 (several servers) in FP8 and 7 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.

GLM-5.3 VRAM badge

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/glm-5-3.json.

GLM-5.3 VRAM badge

[![GLM-5.3 VRAM](https://studiotvai.com/badge/glm-5-3.svg)](https://studiotvai.com/vram-requirements/glm-5-3)

Other models

Same family (large moe): MiniMax M2.7 · DeepSeek R1 · Kimi K2.6 · GLM-5.3-Flash · DeepSeek V4 Flash · DeepSeek V4 Pro · DeepSeek V4.1 Flash · MiMo-V2.6 Pro · MiMo-V2.6 Flash · Kimi K3 · Mistral Large 4 · DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp · Qwen3.8 2.4T-A95B · Ornith 1.5 397B · Atria Dawn Preview · Intern S2 397B

All models: Llama 3.1 8B · Mistral Small 3.2 24B · Qwen3 32B · Llama 3.3 70B · Llama 3.1 405B · Qwen3.5 4B · 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 3 Nano 30B-A3B · Nemotron 3 Super 120B-A12B · MiniMax M2.7 · DeepSeek R1 · Kimi K2.6 · GLM-5.3-Flash · DeepSeek V4 Flash · DeepSeek V4 Pro · DeepSeek V4.1 Flash · MiMo-V2.6 Pro · MiMo-V2.6 Flash · 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

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.