Ministral 3 14B has 13.9B parameters. In BF16 its weights alone take 26.0 GiB; quantized to 4-bit, about 7.73 GiB. Each 32K-token request adds 5.00 GiB of KV cache. Cheapest way to run it today: 1 × RTX A4000 (16 GB) at $0.072 per hour. It reads text and images and calls tools.
Read every day from Hugging Face. Split files are added together; vision projectors are left out.
How many GPUs to run Ministral 3 14B
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
FP8 (native)
BF16 / FP16
8-bit
4-bit
GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB
Not on this GPU
2
1
1
GeForce RTX 5090 32 GB
Not on this GPU
1
1
1
RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB
Not on this GPU
1
1
1
Mac M5 Max 128 GB 96 GB usable
Not on this GPU
1
1
1
Ryzen AI Max+ 395 128 GB 96 GB usable
Not on this GPU
1
1
1
DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB
Not on this GPU
1
1
1
NVIDIA H100 80 GB
1
1
1
1
NVIDIA H200 141 GB
1
1
1
1
NVIDIA B200 (HGX) 180 GB
1
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. Not on this GPU: the official FP8 weights do not run there (llama.cpp needs a GGUF version, and vLLM needs a GPU with FP8 support).
Cheapest way to run Ministral 3 14B today
For each GPU: the fewest cards that fit Ministral 3 14B with one 8K-token request, the most faithful weight format at that count, and the cheapest on-demand price (2026-10-30).
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.
The repository sets no sampling defaults: these are OpenRouter's defaults for Ministral 3 14B.
Setting
Value
Temperature
0.3
With llama.cpp, pass them yourself: --temp 0.3
KV cache: how memory grows with context
Architecture: 40 layers · GQA, 8 KV heads × 128 · vision encoder. Every layer keeps keys and values for every token (grouped-query attention), so the cache grows linearly with context.
Context per request
BF16 cache
FP8 cache
8K tokens
1.25 GiB
0.63 GiB
32K tokens
5.00 GiB
2.50 GiB
128K tokens
20.0 GiB
10.0 GiB
256K tokens
40.0 GiB
20.0 GiB
Ministral 3 14B VRAM FAQ
How much VRAM does Ministral 3 14B need?
In BF16 the weights alone take 26.0 GiB (28 GB). In FP8 that is 14.2 GiB, and about 7.73 GiB with 4-bit quantization (Q4_K_M); the official FP8 checkpoint is 14.6 GiB. Each request then adds KV cache: 1.25 GiB at 8K tokens and 5.00 GiB at 32K (BF16 cache).
Can Ministral 3 14B run on a single RTX 4090 (24 GB)?
Yes. In Q8_0 it fits on one RTX 4090 with an 8K-token context (15.5 GiB including the cache, with llama.cpp).
Can Ministral 3 14B run on an RTX 5090 (32 GB)?
Yes. In BF16 (27.2 GiB with an 8K-token context) it fits on one RTX 5090, with llama.cpp.
Can Ministral 3 14B run on a Mac?
Yes. In 4-bit (Q4_K_M with llama.cpp) it needs a Mac with 16 GB of unified memory or more, of which macOS gives the GPU about 11 GB, for one request with an 8K-token context. In 8-bit (Q8_0) it needs 24 GB or more.
Can Ministral 3 14B run on a DGX Spark or a Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (128 GB)?
Yes. In BF16 (27.2 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.
What is the cheapest way to run Ministral 3 14B?
On 2026-10-30, the cheapest on-demand setup is 1 × RTX A4000 (16 GB) with Q4_K_M weights on Vast.ai, at $0.072 per hour (about $52.56 per month). Next: 1 × NVIDIA L4 (24 GB) with FP8 weights on Vast.ai, at $0.104 per hour. Sized for one 8K-token request; prices are checked every hour.
How many H100 GPUs does Ministral 3 14B 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.
Can Ministral 3 14B read images?
Yes. Ministral 3 14B reads text and images. Images add tokens to the context, so they also add KV cache.
Does Ministral 3 14B support tool calling?
Yes, Ministral 3 14B supports tool (function) calling: it can ask your application to run a function and use the result.
What temperature should I use with Ministral 3 14B?
The repository sets no defaults; OpenRouter uses temperature 0.3.
Ministral 3 14B 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/ministral-3-14b.json.
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.