Run Qwen3 30B-A3B (MoE) on a VPS.
prices as of · Contabo as of · 81 of 524 plans fit, disk included · re-ranked daily
The CPU darling: 30B of knowledge, 3B active per token, so it streams like a small model on a 24–32 GB VPS. On a CPU-only VPS it needs about 20.9 GB of RAM: 18.6 GB of Q4_K_M weights, 819 MB of KV cache for an 8,192-token context and 1.5 GB for the OS and runtime. 81 of the 524 plans in our index fit and include a disk; the cheapest comfortable pick is netcup's VPS 4000 G12 · 12 vCore · 32 GB at $31.43/mo, streaming an estimated 6–12 tok/s.
The cheapest VPS that runs Qwen3 30B-A3B (MoE) is netcup VPS 4000 G12 at $31.43/mo, 32 GB of RAM against the 20.9 GB the model needs, checked 16 Sept 2026.
Best VPS plans for Qwen3 30B-A3B (MoE)
ranked by estimated tokens/s per dollar, comfortable fits first
- 1runs comfortably~9–18 tok/s$38.71/moView at netcup ↗
- 2runs comfortably~6–12 tok/s$28.85/mochecked 10 days agoView at Contabo ↗
- 3runs comfortably~6–12 tok/s$31.43/moView at netcup ↗
- 4runs comfortably~6–12 tok/s$34.03/monot available nowView at Hetzner ↗
- 5runs comfortably~4.8–9.6 tok/s$32.31/moView at HOSTKEY ↗
- 6runs comfortably~6–12 tok/s$42.69/mochecked 10 days agoView at Contabo ↗
Speed = effective memory bandwidth ÷ active weight bytes (4 GB/s per shared vCPU, 6 per dedicated, ×0.5 for MoE routing overhead), 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
20.9 GB
- weights · Q4_K_M
- 18.6 GB
- KV cache · 8K context
- 819 MB
- OS + runtime headroom
- 1.5 GB
Other quants: Q8_0 weights 32.5 GB (near-lossless, about half of F16); F16 61.1 GB. Comfortable = 20% headroom over the total.
Model card
- Size
- 31B total · 3.3B active
- Context
- 40K 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 · 2,104,492 downloads.
Or buy hardware · 8 reference machines fit
all machines →- Mac mini (M6, 32 GB)32 GB · 153 GB/s · ~20–31 tok/s$1,299= 41 mo of VPS
- Framework Desktop (Ryzen AI Max+ 395, 64 GB)64 GB · 256 GB/s · ~34–52 tok/s$1,659*= 53 mo of VPS
- Mac mini (M5 Pro, 64 GB)64 GB · 307 GB/s · ~40–62 tok/s$2,299= 73 mo of VPS
- Mac Studio (M5 Max, 36 GB)36 GB · 460 GB/s · ~60–93 tok/s$2,499= 80 mo of VPS
- Framework Desktop (Ryzen AI Max+ 395, 128 GB)128 GB · 256 GB/s · ~34–52 tok/s$3,149*= 100 mo of VPS
- GeForce RTX 5090 32 GB (card only)32 GB · 1792 GB/s · ~100+ tok/s$4,300*= 10+ yrs of VPS
Buy · per month
$37.45
$36.08 hardware + $1.36 power
Rent · per month
$31.43
netcup VPS 4000 G12 · 12 vCore · 32 GB
Break-even
The Mac mini (M6, 32 GB) pays for itself after 43 months of replacing the VPS, and it streams an estimated 20–31 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 30B-A3B (MoE) need?
- About 20.9 GB for CPU inference at Q4_K_M: 18.6 GB of weights, 819 MB of KV cache at 8,192 tokens of context, and 1.5 GB of headroom. Longer contexts need more KV cache (96 KB per token for this model).
- What is the cheapest VPS that can run Qwen3 30B-A3B (MoE)?
- netcup VPS 4000 G12 · 12 vCore · 32 GB (32 GB RAM, 12 vCPU) at $31.43/mo excl. VAT runs it comfortably as of 16 Sept 2026. OVHcloud VPS-4 2027 · 8 vCPU / 24 GB · EU at $27.11/mo is a tight fit.
- How fast will Qwen3 30B-A3B (MoE) run on a VPS without a GPU?
- Roughly 9–18 tok/s on the top pick. Token generation is limited by memory bandwidth, because each new token reads the active experts' weights once. More vCPUs help, dedicated ones most, but a GPU or an Apple silicon machine is 10 to 50 times faster.