Curiosity · AI Model
Stable Code 3B
Stable Code 3B is Stability AI's compact 3-billion-parameter code model, designed to run locally for IDE completions on commodity hardware (even CPU-only). It supports fill-in-the-middle (FIM) prompting, 16k context, and is permissively licensed. It remains a reference point for the 'tiny local coding model' niche.
Model specs
- Vendor
- Stability AI
- Family
- Stable Code
- Released
- 2024-01
- Context window
- 16,384 tokens
- Modalities
- text, code
Strengths
- Runs comfortably on a single consumer GPU or modern CPU
- Permissive Stability Community Licence for research and SMB use
- Fill-in-the-middle training suits IDE completion patterns
Limitations
- HumanEval scores well below modern 7B+ coding models
- No instruction-tuned chat variant — plain code completion
- 16k context is small vs. 2026 frontier code models
Use cases
- Offline code completion for privacy-sensitive teams
- On-device IDE plugins (VS Code, Neovim) via llama.cpp
- Teaching FIM prompting and local model workflows
- Hackathon-scale coding assistants
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Score | As of |
|---|---|---|
| HumanEval | ~33% | 2026-04 |
| MultiPL-E (JS) | ~31% | 2026-04 |
| MBPP | ~50% | 2026-04 |
Frequently asked questions
What is Stable Code 3B?
Stable Code 3B is Stability AI's small 3-billion-parameter code-generation model. It supports fill-in-the-middle prompting and is sized for local inference on consumer hardware.
Can I use Stable Code 3B commercially?
Yes, under Stability's Community Licence for research and small-business use. Larger commercial uses require a paid Stability membership.
Sources
- Stable Code 3B on HuggingFace — accessed 2026-04-20
- Stability AI — Stable Code announcement — accessed 2026-04-20