Llama Guard 4 12B on Raspberry Pi 5 (8 GB)

Can the Raspberry Pi 5 (8 GB) run Llama Guard 4 12B?

No, it doesn’t fit

No. Llama Guard 4 12B needs about 8.8 GB even at Q4_K_M; the Raspberry Pi 5 (8 GB) has 6.4 GB usable.

Download Llama Guard 4 12B

Original weights · Hugging Face

Full-precision files from Meta, for fine-tuning, vLLM, Transformers.

huggingface.co/meta-llama/Llama-Guard-4-12B (opens in a new tab)

Free Hugging Face account needed: request access on the model page, and Meta approves it (usually within minutes to a few hours).

Links checked 6 days ago against Hugging Face, Ollama and GitHub.

How it’s rated

Quality 62Good quality (B) · 62 of 100: how capable the model is at Q4_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 8/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.: How capable the model itself is at Q4_K_M, from its editorial quality tier scaled by the quantization or precision. It’s the same on any hardware that runs this variant. Scale: A+ 85+ · A 70+ · B 55+ · C 40+ · D under 40.
Runs Won't run: How well it runs on the Raspberry Pi 5 (8 GB): speed, capped by how well it fits in memory. Runs great: 30+ tokens/s (or near the image, video or decision speed target) · Runs well: 10+ tokens/s · Slow: 3+ tokens/s · Very slow: under 3 · Won’t run: doesn’t fit even with offload. A tight fit or RAM offload caps it at Runs well; heavy offload caps it at Slow.

Match score

To order lists, each result also gets a match score out of 100 from four parts. It favors the most capable model that still runs well.

PrecisionEditorial precision tier from the model’s published benchmarks, scaled by the quantization or precision used.	8.5 / 45
Memory fitFull marks when the model fits in the share of unified memory the GPU can use; fewer when it goes past that limit.	0.0 / 25
SpeedTime for one decision against a 100 ms target: reading the input plus any tokens the model writes.	0.0 / 15
ClarityHow easy the answer is to use in code: a probability or score earns the most, written feedback before a score the least.	0.0 / 15
Match score	8.5 / 100

The match score orders results; it is not shown as a grade. Quality and Runs are the two ratings in the tables.

It doesn’t fit, so only a reduced share of the quality points counts and fit, speed and memory use score zero.

Every quantization on the Raspberry Pi 5 (8 GB)

Quant	Memory needed	Available	Speed	Runs	Quality	Download
`Q4_K_M`	8.8 GB	6.4 GB	—	Won't run	62Good quality (B) · 62 of 100: how capable the model is at Q4_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 8/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	All files (opens in a new tab)
`Q5_K_M`	10.0 GB	6.4 GB	—	Won't run	64Good quality (B) · 64 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 8/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	All files (opens in a new tab)
`Q6_K`	11.4 GB	6.4 GB	—	Won't run	65Good quality (B) · 65 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 8/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	All files (opens in a new tab)
`Q8_0`	14.2 GB	6.4 GB	—	Won't run	66Good quality (B) · 66 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 8/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	All files (opens in a new tab)
`F16`	25.5 GB	6.4 GB	—	Won't run	66Good quality (B) · 66 of 100: how capable the model is at F16, whatever it runs on. Match score 8/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	Original weights (opens in a new tab)

Times are for one request with a 512-token input and about 6 tokens written. Batching servers process many requests at once.

Hardware that can run it

65Good quality (B) · 65 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 80/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Q6_K · 119 ms · Runs great
65Good quality (B) · 65 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 79/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Q6_K · 133 ms · Runs great
65Good quality (B) · 65 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 77/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Q6_K · 187 ms · Runs well
65Good quality (B) · 65 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 77/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Q6_K · 191 ms · Runs well
65Good quality (B) · 65 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 76/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Q6_K · 244 ms · Runs well
65Good quality (B) · 65 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 75/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Q6_K · 259 ms · Runs well

Models that do run on the Raspberry Pi 5 (8 GB)

78Great quality (A) · 78 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 85/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. OpenAI Privacy Filter Q8_0 · 159 ms
86Excellent quality (A+) · 86 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 81/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Jina Reranker v3.5 Q8_0 · 3.5 s
89Excellent quality (A+) · 89 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 81/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Qwen3 Reranker 4B Q6_K · 23.2 s
84Great quality (A) · 84 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 80/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Jina Reranker v3 Q8_0 · 3.5 s
87Excellent quality (A+) · 87 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 80/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. zerank-2 Q6_K · 23.2 s

Estimates come from published hardware specs and our open formulas, not from running the model on your machine. Real speed varies with runtime, drivers and settings. Numbers marked “Measured” come from a linked benchmark.