Which Costs Less, Running LLMs Locally or Calling an API

An experience piece (members only): for occasional use (chat, copywriting, code edits), an API is cheaper; for high-frequency batch work (daily transcription, classification, processing large volumes of material, fixed workflows), running locally may pay off. The core dividing line is monthly token consumption, plus whether the task needs top-tier model quality. The article works out the numbers and the hidden costs on both sides for you.

Machine translation. Read the original