| Dataset Size (on disk) | Minimum RAM needed | Comfortable RAM | |---|---|---| | 100 MB (e.g., country roads) | 4 GB | 8 GB | | 500 MB (e.g., county parcels) | 8 GB | 16 GB | | 2 GB (e.g., state boundaries) | 16 GB | 32 GB | | 10+ GB (e.g., national LiDAR) | 32 GB | 64 GB+ | Use spatial indexes (QGIS creates them automatically for shapefiles/geopackages) and enable "Render layers in parallel" in Settings > Rendering. 6. Graphics & GPU Requirements – Detailed QGIS uses OpenGL for rendering (not DirectX or Vulkan).
| OS | Minimum Version | Architecture | Notes | |---|---|---|---| | | Windows 10 (64-bit) | x64 | Windows 7/8 no longer supported. Windows 11 works perfectly. | | macOS | macOS 11 (Big Sur) | Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3) & Intel (x86_64) | Native Apple Silicon support since QGIS 3.30. | | Linux | Ubuntu 20.04 / Debian 11 / Fedora 36 | 64-bit | Installed via apt , dnf , or Flatpak/Snap. | | Android/iOS | Not officially supported | N/A | Use "QField" (mobile version of QGIS) instead. | Important: 32-bit operating systems are no longer supported after QGIS 3.0. 2. Minimum System Requirements (Runs, but slowly) Use this as a baseline for small projects (e.g., a few shapefiles, small rasters <100MB, basic editing). qgis requirements
This guide covers and QGIS 3.40 (Current Release) . 1. Operating System (OS) Requirements QGIS runs natively on all major operating systems. There is no "best" OS—only what you are comfortable with. | Dataset Size (on disk) | Minimum RAM