How many polygons should a 3D model have?
Starting ranges for triangle counts on mobile, PC, web and AR, and why polycount is only one part of performance.
By the threeD editorial team. Published . 6 min read.
“How many polygons is too many?” has no single answer. A budget depends on the hardware, how many copies of a model are on screen at once, how close the camera gets, and what else the frame has to do. What follows are common starting points that teams use before they profile their own project. Treat them as a first guess, not a rule.
Counts below are in triangles, because that is what the GPU draws. A quad counts as two.
Starting ranges by platform
| Asset | Mobile | PC / console |
|---|---|---|
| Small prop (cup, book, bottle) | 100 – 1,000 | 500 – 5,000 |
| Medium prop (chair, crate, lamp) | 500 – 3,000 | 2,000 – 15,000 |
| Large prop or vehicle | 2,000 – 15,000 | 10,000 – 100,000 |
| Main character | 5,000 – 25,000 | 30,000 – 150,000 |
For comparison, here are real, production-quality assets from the sample gallery, lightest first. Counts are measured from the files, including instanced copies.
| Asset | Type | Triangles | GLB size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plain wooden table | Furniture | 196 | 208 KB |
| Halved avocado | Food | 682 | 74 KB |
| Vintage CRT television | Props | 1,914 | 280 KB |
| Croissant | Food | 1,988 | 362 KB |
| Red oil drum | Props | 2,612 | 399 KB |
| Tufted leather sofa | Furniture | 2,690 | 215 KB |
| Claw hammer | Tools | 2,753 | 290 KB |
| Cordless drill | Tools | 2,835 | 259 KB |
| Cassette player | Props | 3,597 | 429 KB |
| Lemon | Food | 3,986 | 336 KB |
| Gothic green armchair | Furniture | 3,989 | 352 KB |
| Rubber duck | Props | 4,098 | 158 KB |
| Metallic water bottle | Props | 4,226 | 195 KB |
| Wooden lamp post with lantern | Props | 4,382 | 425 KB |
| Portable CD boombox | Props | 5,706 | 331 KB |
| Red apple | Food | 6,984 | 304 KB |
| Oak lounge armchair | Furniture | 7,029 | 444 KB |
| Wooden ukulele | Props | 8,549 | 539 KB |
| Twin-bell alarm clock | Props | 8,703 | 438 KB |
| Metal watering can | Tools | 9,312 | 646 KB |
| Red tool chest | Tools | 10,229 | 574 KB |
| Concrete cat statue | Sculpture | 10,842 | 888 KB |
| Gothic cabinet | Furniture | 11,901 | 695 KB |
| Megaphone | Props | 15,744 | 548 KB |
| Marble bust | Sculpture | 16,226 | 623 KB |
| Laced leather corset | Characters & wearables | 17,606 | 868 KB |
| Vintage microscope | Props | 18,630 | 842 KB |
| Vintage binoculars | Props | 18,707 | 939 KB |
| Porcelain horse figurine | Sculpture | 21,524 | 728 KB |
| Wine and champagne bottles | Props | 24,783 | 1.1 MB |
| Vintage rangefinder camera | Props | 25,728 | 1.5 MB |
| Industrial coffee cart | Furniture | 27,080 | 1.2 MB |
| Street rat | Creatures | 27,903 | 1.0 MB |
| Victorian tea set | Props | 28,844 | 818 KB |
| Candle chandelier | Props | 29,202 | 1.0 MB |
| Hurricane lantern | Props | 31,255 | 1.0 MB |
| Velvet lounge chair | Furniture | 35,172 | 1.4 MB |
| Weathered boulder | Nature | 65,784 | 3.4 MB |
| Potted plant | Plants | 69,345 | 2.1 MB |
| Marble chess set | Props | 70,624 | 1.9 MB |
| Pirate treasure chest | Props | 79,423 | 2.6 MB |
| Toy car on a display cloth | Vehicles | 80,931 | 2.5 MB |
Web viewers and AR
Product viewers usually show one model at a time, so a single model can be denser than a game prop: 10,000 to 100,000 triangles is common. The tighter constraint on the web is download size. A 30 MB file on a mobile connection is a long wait. Texture resolution and compression usually make a bigger difference to file size than triangle count; resizing the gallery models’ textures to 1024 px and converting them to WebP shrank most of them by over 90%. The measured results are in how to reduce GLB file size.
Mobile AR adds a second limit: the phone is also running the camera and tracking, so keep scenes modest. Standalone VR headsets render two views at high frame rates and are among the most demanding targets of all.
Polycount is not the only cost
Triangles are easy to count, which is why people focus on them. These often matter as much or more:
- Draw calls. Each separate mesh and material is usually at least one draw call. A 2,000-triangle prop with eight materials can cost more than a 10,000-triangle prop with one.
- Texture memory. A single 4K texture uses far more memory than most props’ geometry. Use 1K or 2K unless the camera gets very close.
- Overdraw. Layers of transparent geometry, like foliage and glass, are expensive regardless of triangle count.
- Skinning. Animated characters cost more per vertex than static meshes, so the number of bones and influences matters.
Use LODs instead of one compromise
Levels of detail (LODs) let you have a detailed model up close and a light one in the distance. A typical chain keeps 100%, 50%, 25% and 10% of the triangles, switching as the object gets smaller on screen. Unity and Unreal Engine both detect LOD meshes named with _LOD0, _LOD1 and so on. The remesh tool can generate the whole chain in one pass.
How to find your real budget
- Build a test scene with the number of objects you expect in a typical view.
- Run it on the weakest device you intend to support.
- Use the engine’s profiler to see whether you are limited by geometry, draw calls, textures or something else.
- Adjust the budget in whichever direction the profiler points.
For background on why AI-generated meshes are often dense and how to reduce them cleanly, see quads vs triangles.