starter models
Best first models for this cohort
Phi-4-reasoning
13B class • 8.5 GB minimum
Phi-4-reasoning is the clearest text-first American recommendation around the 13B class when you care about reasoning quality more than multimodal extras.
Gemma 3 12B
13B class • 11.0 GB minimum
Gemma 3 12B stays interesting when you want a smaller multimodal American model, but it is less turnkey than Phi-4-reasoning for plain text work.
OLMo 3 Instruct 7B
7B class • 5.0 GB minimum
Ai2's 7B instruct release is the clearest Apache-licensed American alternative to Llama when you want a smaller fully open local model.