Local LLM vs API break-even calculator
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Cheaper to buy a GPU and run local, or pay per token? Plug in hardware cost, power draw, daily output volume, and an API price — get monthly costs and a break-even timeline.
Hardware
Electricity
Usage
Compute time: h/day ( h/mo at this volume).
API comparison
Output-token pricing only. Compare with the inference cost calculator for full input+output workloads. snapshot.
Local / month
API / month
output tokens/mo
Monthly savings vs API:
Show your work
Caveats: local open-weight models still trail frontier APIs on hard tasks. Your time maintaining drivers, quantizations, and crashes is a real cost this sheet ignores. API prices keep falling. Privacy, offline access, and zero per-token anxiety are non-dollar benefits that may dominate the decision — use the VRAM calculator to confirm the model actually fits your hardware first.
About this tool
This is a rough TCO sketch: amortized hardware plus electricity for the hours you are actually generating tokens, compared to a single output-token API rate. It does not model input tokens, batch APIs, or subscription plans.
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