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.