Which needs less VRAM, Smol Llama 101M GQA or Llama Guard 3 1B?

At BF16, Smol Llama 101M GQA needs 0.5 GB and Llama Guard 3 1B needs 3.3 GB, so Smol Llama 101M GQA is the lighter option to run locally.

What is the difference between Smol Llama 101M GQA and Llama Guard 3 1B?

Smol Llama 101M GQA is a 101M model from BEE-spoke-data (Llama family), while Llama Guard 3 1B is a 1.5B model from Meta (Llama family). Compare their VRAM requirements above to see which fits your GPU or Mac.

Smol Llama 101M GQA vs Llama Guard 3 1B

Side-by-side comparison of VRAM requirements, quantization, context length, and hardware compatibility.

Smol Llama 101M GQA

BEE-spoke-data · 101M

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Llama Guard 3 1B

Meta · 1.5B

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Specifications

	Smol Llama 101M GQA	Llama Guard 3 1B
Parameters	101M	1.5B
Context	1K	—
Architecture	LlamaForCausalLM	—
License	Apache 2.0	llama3.2
Downloads	1.9K	44.9K
Released	Dec 2025	Sep 2024

VRAM by Quantization: Smol Llama 101M GQA vs Llama Guard 3 1B

Quantization	Bits	Smol Llama 101M GQA VRAM	Llama Guard 3 1B VRAM
BF16	16.00	0.5 GB	3.3 GB

Verdict

Smol Llama 101M GQA needs less VRAM at BF16 (0.5 GB vs 3.3 GB), so it fits on smaller GPUs. Llama Guard 3 1B is the more widely downloaded of the two.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which needs less VRAM, Smol Llama 101M GQA or Llama Guard 3 1B?: At BF16, Smol Llama 101M GQA needs 0.5 GB and Llama Guard 3 1B needs 3.3 GB, so Smol Llama 101M GQA is the lighter option to run locally.
What is the difference between Smol Llama 101M GQA and Llama Guard 3 1B?: Smol Llama 101M GQA is a 101M model from BEE-spoke-data (Llama family), while Llama Guard 3 1B is a 1.5B model from Meta (Llama family). Compare their VRAM requirements above to see which fits your GPU or Mac.