MACSTUDIOS.NET · Field Guide · Data verified Jul 2026
Cheapest Mac to run Qwen2.5 72B
72B parameters · quality index 30 · coding 28 · every Apple Silicon Mac ever sold, compared.
The cheapest Mac that runs Qwen2.5 72B comfortably is a used Mac Studio M1 Max 10c/24c 64GB (2022) at about $1,475 EST. on the used market — running Q4_K_M quantization at roughly 4.6 tok/s with up to 19K tokens of context.
Every Mac that runs it, by used price
| Machine | Used price | Runs at | Est. speed | Max context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mac Studio M1 Max 10c/24c 64GB (2022) | $1,475 EST. | Q4_K_M | 4.6 tok/s | 19K tokens |
| Mac Studio M2 Max 12c/30c 64GB (2023) | $1,499 EST. | Q4_K_M | 4.6 tok/s | 19K tokens |
| Mac Studio M1 Max 10c/32c 64GB (2022) | $1,598 EST. | Q4_K_M | 4.6 tok/s | 19K tokens |
| Mac Studio M2 Max 12c/38c 64GB (2023) | $1,624 EST. | Q4_K_M | 4.6 tok/s | 19K tokens |
| Mac mini M4 Pro 14c/20c 64GB (2024) | $1,693 EST. | Q4_K_M | 3.1 tok/s | 19K tokens |
| Mac Studio M2 Max 12c/38c 96GB (2023) | $1,874 EST. | Q6_K | 3.6 tok/s | 55K tokens |
| MacBook Pro M1 Max 10c/32c 64GB (2021) | $1,979 EST. | Q4_K_M | 4.6 tok/s | 19K tokens |
| Mac Studio M4 Max 16c/40c 64GB (2025) | $2,040 EST. | Q4_K_M | 6.3 tok/s | 19K tokens |
| MacBook Pro M2 Max 12c/38c 64GB (2023) | $2,437 EST. | Q4_K_M | 4.6 tok/s | 19K tokens |
| MacBook Pro M3 Max 16c/40c 64GB (2023) | $2,437 EST. | Q4_K_M | 4.6 tok/s | 19K tokens |
See all 31 machines, other price bases, and live currency conversion →
Run it
ollama run qwen2.5:72b pulls the default (≈Q4) build once you have Ollama installed.
Or skip the hardware
Cloud APIs serve Qwen2.5 72B at about $0.4 per million output tokens. The main site's break-even solver computes the daily usage where owning a Mac becomes cheaper than renting.
Open the interactive guide — speed simulator, TCO, all 75 machines →Estimates: used prices are market ballparks, speeds are bandwidth-model estimates (±30%) calibrated against llama.cpp benchmarks — the methodology documents every formula. Computed from the same dataset as the live tool.