Free, downloadable AI models have consistently caught up to ChatGPT within 3 months, for almost a year now.

I highly encourage you to go and update your priors.

And how much does the hardware cost to run said models?

	▲	fragmede 23 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		How good do you want it to be? For a close to ChatGPT today (April, 2026), you're still looking at a system with 7xH200+chassis, which will run you $300, or a GB200 NV72, which is $2-3 million. OTOH, a Qwen3.6 quantized model can be run on $10,000 (high end Mac) or $1,000 (Mac mini) worth of hardware. Even a Pixel 10 Pro cellphone ($1,000) can run useful models locally.
	▲	dboreham 29 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You can run them slowly on any machine that has enough memory.