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Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B VRAM Requirements

JetBrains, Czechia · Released September 20, 2026New

Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B has 12.1B parameters (2.5B active per token). In BF16 its weights alone take 22.6 GiB; quantized to 4-bit, about 7.37 GiB. Each 32K-token request adds 0.48 GiB of KV cache. Cheapest way to run it today: 1 × GeForce RTX 3090 (24 GB) at $0.143 per hour.

Size your own setup in the calculator →

Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B at a glance

Made by
JetBrains, Czechia
Released
September 20, 2026
Parameters
12.1B, 2.5B active
Context window
128K tokens
License
Apache 2.0, commercial use allowed
Runs with
vLLM, SGLang, llama.cpp (Ollama, LM Studio), MLX (Mac)

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
BF16 / FP1622.622.823.124.4
FP8 / INT811.711.912.213.5
4-bit (GGUF Q4_K_M)7.377.527.859.16

Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B GGUF files

Exact size of each quantization in bartowski/Mellum2.1-12B-A2.5B-Thinking-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
BF1622.6 GiBRTX 5090 (32 GB)
Q8_012.0 GiBRTX 4080 / 4080 SUPER (16 GB)
Q6_K_L11.0 GiBRTX 4080 / 4080 SUPER (16 GB)
Q6_K10.7 GiBRTX 4080 / 4080 SUPER (16 GB)
Q6_K_S10.4 GiBRTX 4080 / 4080 SUPER (16 GB)
Q5_K_M9.28 GiBRTX 4070 / 4070 SUPER (12 GB)
Q4_K_L8.59 GiBRTX 4070 / 4070 SUPER (12 GB)
Q5_K_S8.35 GiBRTX 4070 / 4070 SUPER (12 GB)
Q4_K_M8.21 GiBRTX 4070 / 4070 SUPER (12 GB)
Q4_K_S7.32 GiBRTX 4070 / 4070 SUPER (12 GB)
Q4_17.18 GiBRTX 4070 / 4070 SUPER (12 GB)
IQ4_NL7.14 GiBRTX 4070 / 4070 SUPER (12 GB)
IQ3_M6.75 GiBRTX 4070 / 4070 SUPER (12 GB)
Q3_K_L6.64 GiBRTX 4070 / 4070 SUPER (12 GB)
Q4_06.52 GiBRTX 4060 (8 GB)
IQ4_XS6.49 GiBRTX 4060 (8 GB)
Q3_K_M6.24 GiBRTX 4060 (8 GB)
IQ3_XS5.86 GiBRTX 4060 (8 GB)
IQ3_XXS5.85 GiBRTX 4060 (8 GB)
Q3_K_S5.64 GiBRTX 4060 (8 GB)
Q2_K5.15 GiBRTX 4060 (8 GB)
IQ2_M5.03 GiBRTX 4060 (8 GB)

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

How many GPUs to run Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B

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.

GPUBF16 / FP16FP8 / INT84-bit (GGUF Q4_K_M)
GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB211
GeForce RTX 5090 32 GB111
RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB111
Mac M5 Max 128 GB 96 GB usable111
NVIDIA H100 80 GB111
NVIDIA H200 141 GB111
NVIDIA B200 (HGX) 180 GB111

Cheapest way to run Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B today

For each GPU: the fewest cards that fit Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B 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: 28 layers · 7 full attention (4 KV × 128) · 21 sliding-window layers (1024 tokens, 4 KV × 128). Its KV cache is 3.7× 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 12B must sit in memory: VRAM depends on the total, speed on the active part.

Context per requestBF16 cacheFP8 cache
8K tokens0.15 GiB0.08 GiB
32K tokens0.48 GiB0.24 GiB
128K tokens1.79 GiB0.90 GiB

Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B VRAM FAQ

How much VRAM does Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B need?

In BF16 the weights alone take 22.6 GiB (24 GB). In FP8 that is 11.7 GiB, and about 7.37 GiB with 4-bit quantization (Q4_K_M). Each request then adds KV cache: 0.15 GiB at 8K tokens and 0.48 GiB at 32K (BF16 cache).

Can Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B run on a single RTX 4090 (24 GB)?

Yes. In FP8 / INT8 it fits on one RTX 4090 with an 8K-token context (11.9 GiB including the cache, with llama.cpp).

What is the cheapest way to run Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B?

On 2026-10-10, the cheapest on-demand setup is 1 × GeForce RTX 3090 (24 GB) with FP8 / INT8 weights on Vast.ai, at $0.143 per hour (about $104.39 per month). Next: 1 × GeForce RTX 5080 (16 GB) with FP8 / INT8 weights on Vast.ai, at $0.223 per hour. Sized for one 8K-token request; prices are checked every hour.

How many H100 GPUs does Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B need?

With one request and an 8K-token context: 1 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.

Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B 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/mellum2-1-12b-a2-5b.json.

Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B VRAM badge

[![Mellum2.1 12B-A2.5B VRAM](https://studiotvai.com/badge/mellum2-1-12b-a2-5b.svg)](https://studiotvai.com/vram-requirements/mellum2-1-12b-a2-5b)

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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 · 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 · 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.