Local hardware vs a cloud API
Whether buying hardware costs less than paying per token, using measured power draw and throughput from a published result rather than a nameplate rating.
Paying the API is cheaper over 3 years
Hardware pays for itself after about 303.1 months at this volume.
- Cloud, 3y
- $216
- Local, 3y
- $1,802.22
- Of which electricity
- $2.22
- Difference
- -$1,586.22
Local running cost uses 26.8 W and 360.9 tok/s measured on llamacpp-1787391945. Cloud pricing is yours to supply — this site bundles none, because provider prices change and a stale figure here would quietly mislead. It also ignores everything that is not electricity or purchase price: your time, cooling, failure rates, and the fact that a cloud API needs no capital up front.