About Qwen3 Coder 30B-A3B
Qwen3 Coder 30B-A3B is Alibaba's 30.5B-parameter model released in July 2025, with a 256K-token context window. It is a mixture-of-experts model: all 30.5B parameters must sit in memory, but only ~3.3B are active per token, which is what makes it fast for its size. It uses a classic dense-attention design whose KV cache grows linearly with context: its KV cache is about 0.8 GB at an 8K context, 12.9 GB at 128K, and 25.8 GB at the full 256K window (FP16 cache).
For most people Q4_K_M is the sweet spot — the most popular quality/size trade-off — while Q8 is near-lossless if you have the memory. Totals above include the KV cache and a realistic framework overhead, so they are what you should expect to see in practice rather than just the download size. Weight sizes are calibrated against real GGUF files — see themethodology.
Frequently asked questions
How much VRAM does Qwen3 Coder 30B-A3B need?
At Q4_K_M with an 8K context, Qwen3 Coder 30B-A3B needs about 22 GB (weights 19 GB + KV cache + overhead). The smallest common hardware that fits is a RX 7900 XTX.
Can an RTX 4090 (24GB) run Qwen3 Coder 30B-A3B?
Yes. An RTX 4090's 24 GB runs Qwen3 Coder 30B-A3B at Q4_K_M (about 22 GB at 8K context).
Can a Mac run Qwen3 Coder 30B-A3B?
Yes — Apple Silicon with 32 GB of unified memory or more (macOS lets the GPU use ~75% of it, ~24 GB) runs Qwen3 Coder 30B-A3B at Q4_K_M.
Related
VRAM calculator for any model ·Token counter
Last updated 2026-08-03. Architecture figures from the model's published config.json; see themethodology.