alt Hacker NewsHuge Claude user here… can someone help me set some realistic expectations if I bought a Mac mini and spun one up? I use Claude primarily for dev work and Home Lab projects. Are the open models good enough to run locally and replace the Claude workload? Or am I better off with my $20/mo Claude subscription?
Replies
hamdingers • today at 5:15 PM
Best way to find out is to buy $10 of OpenRouter credits and try the models for yourself.
From my experience doing this, they're nowhere close, but it's entertaining to check in once in a while.
alfiedotwtf • today at 4:58 PM
So far, I’ve found gpt-oss-20B to be pretty good agentic wise, but it’s nothing like Claude Code using its paid models.
(I haven’t tried the 120B, which I’ve read is significantly better than 20B)
They are good for small tasks but you would not be able to use it like you use Claude and most likely be disappointed. But also, I do not know how you use claude.
There are many services online which offer hosted services for these models, my advice for anyone who is thinking about buying hardware to self host this is to try those first, that way you can get an impression of the capabilities and limitations of those models before you commit to buying hardware