alt Hacker News> I realised the equivalent cost will serve me for years of ≈ $30 per month API/sub access
The advantage is no more 5-hours or weekly session limit anymore. Also no chance your proprietary code ends up in someone repo.
Replies
amunozo • today at 10:35 AM
I still think only privacy is relevant to run on your own infra, never cost.
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crossroadsguy • today at 10:27 AM
That is literally my next sentence :D
david-gpu • today at 10:42 AM
> The advantage is no more 5-hours or weekly session limit anymore
That is not a concern with pay-as-you-go models like DeepSeek. It is stupid inexpensive.
API access does not have a 5-hour or weekly limit.
I run local models, too, but every discussion about these models uses the local quantized versions and the hosted versions interchangeably. They’re not interchangeable. The quantized versions you can run on mid-grade consumer hardware are a step down in quality. That might be fine or might not depending on your use case but it needs to be acknowledged. It’s not until you get into really expensive hardware setups that you can run something like DSv4 Flash at Q8, and you’re not breaking even on that relative to a cloud provider.
Keeping everything local is about the only reason to run local. The other discussions about saving money are missing something.