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Guide · Apple M1

Frigate on Apple Silicon (M1, M3 Pro, M4): Detector Benchmarks

Frigate object detection speeds on Apple M1, M3 Pro and M4 via the Apple Silicon detector, with setup caveats.

last reviewed 2026-10-19 newest Frigate 0.18.2Hardware in this guide: Apple M1 · Apple M3 Pro · Apple M4

Since 0.17, Frigate can use the Apple Silicon NPU through a detector that runs on the macOS host and talks to Frigate over a ZMQ proxy.

Known issues and gotchas

  • Cannot run inside a container: the detector runs on the host via ZMQ proxy, which "adds some latency, only recommended for local connection" (docs).
  • Runs well with any size model, including large (docs).
  • Only YOLOv9 numbers exist so far: M1 9 ms, M3 Pro 6–20 ms, M4 10 ms (s-320) — no community builds yet. Submit yours: Submit your build.

Live numbers for this guide's hardware

Generated from the database at build time

The text above is written by hand and never contains numbers or prices. Everything below is pulled from builds.json and hardware.json when the site is built, so it stays current without touching the guide.

Apple M1
SoCApple Silicon
Estimate capacityCompare
Median inference
9 ms
all models · 2 usable builds
Capacity · estimate
~111 det/s
yolov9-s · 320 median 9 ms · 1 detector
Cameras · estimate
26
5 fps · Typical · under 60% (44 before overload)
Price
not tracked yet
no retailer link listed
BuildSourceModelSpeedCamsFrigatePosted
db-083 Frigate docs yolov9-s 320 9 ms — — checked 2026-10-19
db-083 Frigate docs yolov9-s 320 9 ms — — checked 2026-10-19
Get price drops in the weekly newsletter

Price drops, once a week

When a tracked price is verified or drops, it goes in the newsletter alongside new benchmarks. No per-device alerts and no tracking: the newsletter is the only list.

Newsletter coming soon The signup form appears here as soon as the newsletter embed code is pasted into site.json. Issue #1 is already readable here.
2 builds
Apple M3 Pro
SoCApple Silicon
Estimate capacityCompare
Median inference
8 ms
all models · 6 usable builds
Capacity · estimate
~167 det/s
yolov9-t · 320 median 6 ms · 1 detector
Cameras · estimate
39
5 fps · Typical · under 60% (66 before overload)
Price
not tracked yet
no retailer link listed
BuildSourceModelSpeedCamsFrigatePosted
db-080 Frigate docs yolov9-t 320 6 ms — — checked 2026-10-19
db-080 Frigate docs yolov9-t 320 6 ms — — checked 2026-10-19
db-081 Frigate docs yolov9-s 320 8 ms — — checked 2026-10-19
db-081 Frigate docs yolov9-s 320 8 ms — — checked 2026-10-19
db-082 Frigate docs yolov9-s 640 20 ms — — checked 2026-10-19
db-082 Frigate docs yolov9-s 640 20 ms — — checked 2026-10-19
Get price drops in the weekly newsletter

Price drops, once a week

When a tracked price is verified or drops, it goes in the newsletter alongside new benchmarks. No per-device alerts and no tracking: the newsletter is the only list.

Newsletter coming soon The signup form appears here as soon as the newsletter embed code is pasted into site.json. Issue #1 is already readable here.
6 builds
Apple M4
SoCApple Silicon
Estimate capacityCompare
Median inference
10 ms
all models · 2 usable builds
Capacity · estimate
~100 det/s
yolov9-s · 320 median 10 ms · 1 detector
Cameras · estimate
24
5 fps · Typical · under 60% (40 before overload)
Price
not tracked yet
no retailer link listed
BuildSourceModelSpeedCamsFrigatePosted
db-079 Frigate docs yolov9-s 320 10 ms — — checked 2026-10-19
db-079 Frigate docs yolov9-s 320 10 ms — — checked 2026-10-19
Get price drops in the weekly newsletter

Price drops, once a week

When a tracked price is verified or drops, it goes in the newsletter alongside new benchmarks. No per-device alerts and no tracking: the newsletter is the only list.

Newsletter coming soon The signup form appears here as soon as the newsletter embed code is pasted into site.json. Issue #1 is already readable here.
2 builds