LOADING DATASHEET
GROUNDED IN REAL HUMAN CONVERSATIONSYOUR BENCH
Phi 4 Mini
◆ OPEN
by Microsoft
OPEN WEIGHTSLOCALSMALLCODING HELPFAST ANSWERS
RANKED #182 OF 318 ASSISTANTS · OVERALL #256 OF 493 RANKED · VIBE SCORE 6.2 · 282 VOICES ·
COPY BADGE pastes a README snippet with the rank SVG.
A lightweight text AI from Microsoft designed to run fast on personal devices.
HAPPY9.5
60 mentions
SAD5.5
16 mentions
VIBE TRAJECTORY
26 weeks · 94 voices in this window
AGING WELL
The crowd is warmer now than it was at the start.
HOW TO USE IT
Open weights. You can use a hosted service, or download it and run it yourself, free.
RUN IT ON YOUR OWN MACHINE
Open weights: download Phi 4 Mini once and it's yours. No subscription, no rate limits, works offline.
3.8B parameters, a Q4_K_M file is about 2.5 GB
- BARE MINIMUM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB (used)
6 GB VRAM
~$60 USEDQ4_K_M, ~25 tok/s, 4k context
- SWEET SPOT
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB (used)
12 GB VRAM
~$250 USEDQ8_0 or FP16, ~50 tok/s, 32k context
- FULL POWER
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 24GB (used)
24 GB VRAM
~$700 USEDFP16, ~150 tok/s, full 128k context
LEARN HOW TO SET IT UP
WILL MY BOX RUN PHI 4 MINI?
The three cards above are researched picks. Search the machine you actually have — we only say yes if it should reply at a usable speed, not just load the weights and crawl.
HARDWARE PICKS & PRICES ARE RESEARCHED FROM THE LIVE WEB AND REFRESHED AUTOMATICALLY. TREAT THEM AS BALLPARK, NOT GOSPEL.
WHAT CAN YOU ACTUALLY DO WITH IT?
Everyday jobs on each of those rigs: how long Phi 4 Mini takes, and how good the crowd says it is at that kind of work.
| THE JOB | BARE MINIMUMNVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB (used) | SWEET SPOTNVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB (used) | FULL POWERNVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 24GB (used) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Write an emaila paragraph or two, drafted from a one-line brief | ~20 S★★★★★ | ~10 S★★★★★ | ~3 S★★★★★ |
| Summarize a documenta long report boiled down to the points that matter | ~60 S★★★★★ | ~30 S★★★★★ | ~10 S★★★★★ |
| Build a websitea small landing page, markup and styles together | ~5.3 MIN★★★★★ | ~2.7 MIN★★★★★ | ~53 S★★★★★ |
| Build a backendan API with routes, storage and tests | ~17 MIN★★★★★ | ~8.3 MIN★★★★★ | ~2.8 MIN★★★★★ |
| Build a gamea playable browser game in one file | ~10 MIN★★★★★ | ~5 MIN★★★★★ | ~1.7 MIN★★★★★ |
STARS ARE THE COMMUNITY SCORE FOR THAT KIND OF WORK, DOCKED FOR HOW SQUASHED THE WEIGHTS GET AT EACH TIER. TIMES ARE COMPUTED FROM RESEARCHED SPEEDS. BALLPARK, NOT GOSPEL.
WHAT THE INTERNET SAYS
Community sentiment data is not yet available for Phi 4 Mini due to limited recorded feedback.
119 POSTS · 163 COMMENTS · REDDIT · HACKER NEWS · BLUESKY · STACK OVERFLOW · OTHER FORUMS · GITHUB · X · LEMMY
PEOPLE LOVE
- No fan mail yet. The crowd is still warming up.
PEOPLE COMPLAIN ABOUT
- No complaints yet. The internet is still looking for one. Suspicious.
LOOKING FOR AN ALTERNATIVE?
Checked picks first: tags say why you would switch, stars say how fully each one stands in for Phi 4 Mini.
LFM2.5 2.6B
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
DeepSeek V4 Flash> SOURCES (12)
- LEMMY · 2026-10-01 · 450 UPVOTESSomeone ‘Torturing’ LLMs in a Robot Prison Has Triggered the Dumbest Debate in 'AI' Yet
Someone ‘Torturing’ LLMs in a Robot Prison Has Triggered the Dumbest Debate in 'AI' Yet
- HACKER NEWS · 2025-04-21 · 106 UPVOTESShow HN: Open Codex – OpenAI Codex CLI with open-source LLMs
Show HN: Open Codex – OpenAI Codex CLI with open-source LLMs
- REDDIT · 2025-06-02 · 89 UPVOTES💻 I optimized Qwen3:30B MoE to run on my RTX 3070 laptop at ~24 tok/s - full breakdown inside
💻 I optimized Qwen3:30B MoE to run on my RTX 3070 laptop at ~24 tok/s - full breakdown inside
- REDDIT · 2025-01-15 · 75 UPVOTESComment in r/MachineLearning
Comment in r/MachineLearning
- REDDIT · 2025-01-13 · 64 UPVOTESComment in r/singularity
Comment in r/singularity
- REDDIT · 2024-06-14 · 58 UPVOTESComment in r/MachineLearning
Comment in r/MachineLearning
- REDDIT · 2025-01-15 · 44 UPVOTESComment in r/MachineLearning
Comment in r/MachineLearning
- REDDIT · 2024-06-14 · 44 UPVOTESComment in r/MachineLearning
Comment in r/MachineLearning
- REDDIT · 2025-01-13 · 43 UPVOTESComment in r/singularity
Comment in r/singularity
- REDDIT · 2025-04-22 · 38 UPVOTESWe built an evaluation framework to assess small language models (SLMs) as summarizers in RAG systems, here is what we found!
We built an evaluation framework to assess small language models (SLMs) as summarizers in RAG systems, here is what we found!
- REDDIT · 2025-05-23 · 35 UPVOTESSLM RAG Arena - Compare and Find The Best Sub-5B Models for RAG
SLM RAG Arena - Compare and Find The Best Sub-5B Models for RAG
- REDDIT · 2026-04-14 · 34 UPVOTESRefusal in open-weights models looks like a sparse gate -> amplifier circuit, and generalizes across 12 models from 6 labs (2B-72B)
Refusal in open-weights models looks like a sparse gate -> amplifier circuit, and generalizes across 12 models from 6 labs (2B-72B)