How much macOS support a used Mac still gets, priced by chip

The short answer

Apple published its macOS 27 Golden Gate compatibility list on Sept. 14, 2026, and it opens by settling most of this question: “If you have a Mac with Apple silicon, you can upgrade to macOS 27.” Every Apple silicon Mac mini Apple has sold is on that list, down to the entry Apple words as “Mac mini (M1, 2020).” That machine’s median asking price in our panel was $444.98 on Sept. 15, 2026, across 171 listings from four sources.

So the cheapest Apple silicon mini we track runs the newest macOS nearly six years after it went on sale, and operating-system support is not what ends one of these machines’ life yet. It is what ended the Intel ones. The macOS 27 list names no Intel Mac at all, and Intel Mac minis carried a median ask of $153.47 across 628 listings in the same Sept. 15 reading.

The cheapest answer first: if the Mac on your desk appears on that list, nothing on this page is an argument to replace it.

What Apple lists, and what each chip asks

Apple’s compatibility page names machines by model year. Our tracker records them by chip. The two line up like this: “Mac mini (2023)” covers both the M2 and the M2 Pro, and “Mac mini (2024)” covers both the M4 and the M4 Pro. Every median below is an asking price observed Sept. 15, 2026, and every one mixes memory, storage and condition.

Machine	Apple’s line on the macOS 27 list	Listed	Median ask	n	Sources
Mac mini M1 (2020)	Mac mini (M1, 2020)	Yes	$444.98	171	4
Mac mini M2 (2023)	Mac mini (2023)	Yes	$597.50	116	3
Mac mini M2 Pro (2023)	Mac mini (2023)	Yes	$1,042.49	46	3
Mac mini M4 (2024)	Mac mini (2024)	Yes	$820.00	445	9
Mac mini M4 Pro (2024)	Mac mini (2024)	Yes	$1,745.36	118	7
Intel Mac mini, every model	none	No	$153.47	628	6

The list also carries “Mac mini (M6 or M5 Pro),” the machines Apple ships Sept. 22, which have no secondhand market to price yet.

One row in that table is worth stopping on. The M2 Pro mini asks $222.49 more than the M4 mini at Sept. 15 medians — $1,042.49 against $820.00 — and both sit on the same compatibility list, so the older, more expensive chip buys no additional operating-system life. If you are weighing Pro money at all, our M4 and M4 Pro comparison prices what the Pro chip does buy.

The Mac Studio ladder reads the same way. Apple lists “Mac Studio (2022),” “Mac Studio (2023),” “Mac Studio (2025)” and “Mac Studio (M5 Max or M5 Ultra),” which is every Studio ever sold.

Machine	Apple’s line on the macOS 27 list	Listed	Median ask	n	Sources
Mac Studio M1 Max	Mac Studio (2022)	Yes	$1,737.00	108	4
Mac Studio M1 Ultra	Mac Studio (2022)	Yes	$4,859.10	39	3
Mac Studio M2 Max	Mac Studio (2023)	Yes	$2,184.50	50	3
Mac Studio M2 Ultra	Mac Studio (2023)	Yes	$4,049.50	40	1
Mac Studio M3 Ultra	Mac Studio (2025)	Yes	$7,425.84	88	4
Mac Studio M4 Max	Mac Studio (2025)	Yes	$3,079.06	122	8

Two cautions on that table. The M2 Ultra row comes from a single source, so read it as one seller’s pricing rather than a market, and our panel also holds one observation classified as a Mac Studio with a plain M1 chip — a configuration Apple did not sell — which we exclude rather than publish as a median. The daily tracker carries each reading of both panels.

Six compatibility lists in a row

Here is the number worth quoting, derived by reading Apple’s own compatibility pages rather than recalled. Apple has listed the Mac mini (M1, 2020) on six consecutive macOS compatibility pages: Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma, Sequoia, Tahoe 26 and Golden Gate 27. The newest of those, macOS 27 Golden Gate, was published Sept. 14, 2026. The M1 Mac mini’s median asking price was $444.98 on Sept. 15, 2026, and the lowest qualified ask in that same 171-listing panel was $200.00.

We read all six lists on Sept. 16, 2026, and we did not read the Big Sur or Catalina lists, which come before Monterey, so six is the floor of the run rather than its full length.

Every figure in that grid appears in the text around it, so nothing lives only in the picture.

What Apple has not said about the machines it still supports

Apple has not dropped a single Apple silicon Mac from a new macOS release, and it has not published an end-of-support date for one. This page therefore gives no year for when M1 support ends. Anyone who quotes you one is guessing.

What can be sourced is the Intel record, and it is observed history rather than a commitment Apple ever made.

• The 2018 Intel mini. Apple lists it on the Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma and Sequoia compatibility pages — four consecutive lists we read Sept. 16 — and leaves it off the macOS Tahoe 26 list. macOS Sequoia was released Sept. 16, 2024 according to the third-party tracker endoflife.date, six years after the model year in the machine’s own name.
• Security updates outlast new releases. Apple’s security releases page shows macOS Sequoia 15.8 issued Sept. 14, 2026, so the 2018 Intel mini is still receiving patches on its last supported macOS, eight years after that model year.
• The Late 2014 mini. It appears on the Monterey list and on none of the five newer lists. endoflife.date, again third-party rather than Apple, records Monterey’s security updates ending Sept. 16, 2024, about a decade after that model year.

If you want a planning horizon, that is the honest shape of one: on the two Intel minis we could check first-party, new macOS releases kept arriving for roughly six years after the model year, and security patches continued for years beyond the last new release. Apple has stated nothing about whether Apple silicon machines follow the same curve, and the M1 mini is already six lists deep. Our guide to what a $100 Intel Mac mini is still good for covers what those unsupported machines can still do safely.

Where the Apple Intelligence line actually falls

This is the part that gets reported wrong, so here is exactly what Apple’s own pages say and exactly what we could not find on them.

Apple’s device requirement for Apple Intelligence on the Mac is “Mac with M1 or later”, on a page titled “How to get the next generation of Apple Intelligence” and published Sept. 14, 2026. By that line, every Apple silicon machine in both tables above is eligible; no Intel Mac is, and none runs macOS 27.

The stricter requirement that circulates — M3 or later with at least 12GB of unified memory — does appear on Apple’s own pages, and its scope is narrow. On Apple’s Apple Intelligence page, footnote 4 is attached to one feature, “Customize how Siri sounds,” and reads: “Available on iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, iPhone Duo, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPhone Air, iPad models with M4 and later and at least 12GB of unified memory, Mac models with M3 and later and at least 12GB of unified memory, and Apple Vision Pro (M5).” The same wording appears on the support page above inside a storage note, which allots up to 14 GB of on-device storage to those machines. We found no Apple page stating that Apple Intelligence as a whole requires an M3 or later Mac, and we are not repeating that claim on a secondary source’s word.

For a buyer, the consequence is small but specific. No M1, M2 or M2 Pro Mac mini meets an M3-or-later requirement at any price, and neither does an M1 Max, M1 Ultra, M2 Max or M2 Ultra Mac Studio. The cheapest machine in our panel that does is the M4 Mac mini, at a $820.00 median ask across 445 listings from nine sources on Sept. 15, 2026, with a lowest qualified ask of $573.00 in the same panel. Apple lists the 2024 Mac mini with 16GB of unified memory in its base configuration and the M4 Pro with 24GB, both above the 12GB line.

Two honest qualifications. That $820.00 median mixes memory, storage and condition, so it is not the price of any particular machine, and a buyer who needs the memory threshold should read the memory figure in the specific listing rather than trusting the chip name. And the feature being gated here is a Siri voice option, not the assistant itself — it is not a reason to replace a working Mac.

What to do, cheapest route first

Spend $0. If your Mac appears on the macOS 27 list and you do not want the one gated feature above, you are not behind. The compatibility question this page answers has a free answer for most people who ask it.

Before you buy anything, inspect it. Our used Mac buying checklist covers activation lock, battery and storage health and the return window, and the channel guide compares what each seller’s terms actually protect. The daily tracker carries the current reading of every median above.

Other stores. Apple Certified Refurbished carries a one-year Apple warranty and changes stock between visits. Swappa lists seller warranties where they exist. PayMore has stores where you can look at a machine first. eBay has the deepest inventory and no grading, so vet the seller.

Amazon. Search available configurations: find Mac minis on Amazon. Confirm the chip, the memory, the storage and the condition on the listing itself, and read its price there — we quote no Amazon price, seller or availability on this page, and the medians above are our observations of the wider market, not Amazon offers.

When this page changes

Two events rewrite it. The first is Apple’s next macOS compatibility list, which is when the count of consecutive releases either grows or stops. The second is the one this page exists for and which has not happened yet: the first time Apple leaves an Apple silicon Mac off a new macOS list. On that day the question of how much operating-system life a $444.98 machine buys stops being hypothetical, and we will re-read every row above against Apple’s own pages.

When that day comes, an M1 or M2 Mac will still have another operating system available: Omarchy M, announced Sept. 11, 2026, already installs next to macOS on those chips, and our guide to buying a used Mac for Omarchy M covers what still does not work.