Model fiche
Apertus 8B
By Swiss AI · Switzerland
chat
general
multilingual
fr
Overview
The compact Swiss AI release trained on the Alps supercomputer, covering 1000+ languages including Swiss German and Romansh. Apache 2.0.
When to pick this model
- Local multilingual EU deployments
- On-device assistants for French, German, Italian, or Romansh
- Data-sovereignty-sensitive prototypes
- Apache-licensed baseline for European fine-tuning
VRAM requirements by quantization
| Quantization | VRAM required |
|---|---|
| Q4_K_M (recommended) | 6 GB |
| Q5_K_M | 7 GB |
| Q8_0 | 10 GB |
| FP16 (no quantization) | 16 GB |
VRAM figures include model weights plus a typical 8k KV cache and ~600 MB runtime overhead (Ollama / llama.cpp baseline). Add headroom for higher context lengths.
Strengths
- Around 6 GB VRAM at Q4 — runs on consumer hardware
- Native EU multilingual coverage
- Apache 2.0 license
- Practical for everyday assistant use
Limitations
- Trails Qwen 3 8B on English and coding tasks
- Limited public fine-tunes
- Less benchmark coverage than mainstream 8B models
Architecture & training
Architecture: Dense · 8B · Swiss AI Initiative · compact multilingual EU
Training: Swiss AI — compact version of the sovereign European model.
Verdict
The accessible sovereign 8B for European multilingual work — choose it when language reach beats benchmark dominance.
Quick start
ollama pull hf.co/swissai/Apertus-8B-GGUFOr use the open-source MCP server to query this model from Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible client.