What is the best local LLM for coding?

There is no single winner — the best local LLM for coding depends on your GPU/RAM and whether you need autocomplete speed or deep reasoning.

Strong picks in 2026:

• Qwen 2.5 Coder — excellent code quality per gigabyte; good on 16 GB machines per Alibaba's Qwen 2.5 Coder release notes.
• DeepSeek Coder V2 — strong on harder bugs and refactors if you have VRAM headroom; see DeepSeek's Coder documentation.
• Llama 3.x Instruct — solid general coding plus explanation; widely supported in tools via Ollama's Llama builds.

Use Ollama or your IDE's local model integration (Continue documents local endpoints). For daily driver work on a 16 GB laptop, start with a 7B–14B coder model and benchmark on your repo before chasing 70B downloads.