Run Qwen3 0.6B on a VPS.
prices as of · Contabo as of · 303 of 524 plans fit, disk included · re-ranked daily
Sub-gigabyte model for rerankers, intent detection and edge devices. On a CPU-only VPS it needs about 2.9 GB of RAM: 512 MB of Q4_K_M weights, 922 MB of KV cache for an 8,192-token context and 1.5 GB for the OS and runtime. 303 of the 524 plans in our index fit and include a disk; the cheapest comfortable pick is OVHcloud's VPS-1 2027 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · EU at $5.18/mo, streaming an estimated 11–21 tok/s.
The cheapest VPS that runs Qwen3 0.6B is OVHcloud VPS-1 2027 at $5.18/mo, 4 GB of RAM against the 2.9 GB the model needs, checked 16 Sept 2026.
Best VPS plans for Qwen3 0.6B
ranked by estimated tokens/s per dollar, comfortable fits first
- 1runs comfortably~21–42 tok/s$5.93/moView at HOSTKEY ↗
- 2runs comfortably~32–63 tok/s$8.65/mochecked 10 days agoView at Contabo ↗
- 3runs comfortably~21–42 tok/s$6.35/mochecked 10 days agoView at Contabo ↗
- 4runs comfortably~63–127 tok/s$20.78/moView at netcup ↗
- 5runs comfortably~21–42 tok/s$7.58/moView at HOSTKEY ↗
- 6runs comfortably~32–63 tok/s$11.70/moView at HOSTKEY ↗
Speed = effective memory bandwidth ÷ active weight bytes (4 GB/s per shared vCPU, 6 per dedicated), shown as a band. Real numbers depend on the host CPU generation, AVX-512/AMX support and how noisy the neighbors are, so treat these as order-of-magnitude estimates.
RAM needed · CPU inference
2.9 GB
- weights · Q4_K_M
- 512 MB
- KV cache · 8K context
- 922 MB
- OS + runtime headroom
- 1.5 GB
Other quants: Q8_0 weights 819 MB (near-lossless, about half of F16); F16 1.5 GB. Comfortable = 20% headroom over the total.
Model card
- Size
- 0.75B parameters
- Context
- 32K tokens
- Kind
- chat
- Released
- 2025-04
- License
- Apache-2.0
Facts fetched from Hugging Face on 7 Sept 2026: exact GGUF file sizes, KV geometry from the GGUF header · 21,327,590 downloads.
Or buy hardware · 14 reference machines fit
all machines →- Raspberry Pi 5 (16 GB)16 GB · 17 GB/s · ~9.8–15 tok/s$305*= 59 mo of VPS
- GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB (card only)16 GB · 448 GB/s · ~100+ tok/s$800*= 10+ yrs of VPS
- Mac mini (M6, 16 GB)16 GB · 153 GB/s · ~100+ tok/s$899= 10+ yrs of VPS
- GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16 GB (card only)16 GB · 896 GB/s · ~100+ tok/s$1,200*= 10+ yrs of VPS
- Mac mini (M6, 32 GB)32 GB · 153 GB/s · ~100+ tok/s$1,299= 10+ yrs of VPS
- GeForce RTX 5080 16 GB (card only)16 GB · 960 GB/s · ~100+ tok/s$1,600*= 10+ yrs of VPS
Buy · per month
$8.78
$8.47 hardware + $0.31 power
Rent · per month
$5.18
OVHcloud VPS-1 2027 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · EU
Break-even
The Raspberry Pi 5 (16 GB) pays for itself after 63 months of replacing the VPS, and it streams an estimated 9.8–15 tok/s against the VPS's CPU-only pace.
* approximate: August 2026 US retail median rather than list price. Local speed = peak bandwidth × 0.7 efficiency (0.35 on CPU-only boards) ÷ active weight bytes; unified-memory machines are assumed to give models 75% of their RAM. GPU cards need a host PC that is not included in the price.
Frequently asked
- How much RAM does Qwen3 0.6B need?
- About 2.9 GB for CPU inference at Q4_K_M: 512 MB of weights, 922 MB of KV cache at 8,192 tokens of context, and 1.5 GB of headroom. Longer contexts need more KV cache (112 KB per token for this model).
- What is the cheapest VPS that can run Qwen3 0.6B?
- OVHcloud VPS-1 2027 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · EU (4 GB RAM, 2 vCPU) at $5.18/mo excl. VAT runs it comfortably as of 16 Sept 2026.
- How fast will Qwen3 0.6B run on a VPS without a GPU?
- Roughly 21–42 tok/s on the top pick. Token generation is limited by memory bandwidth, because each new token reads all of the weights once. More vCPUs help, dedicated ones most, but a GPU or an Apple silicon machine is 10 to 50 times faster.