I run local models. Your op is absolutely wrong. To get a local LLM is at least a $1500 investment at the cheapest. $5000 if you want usable.

At $1500 that's 75 months of $20/mo Claude which are MUCH better models than you can run locally.

This calc is off. Using Claude for a few hours with the $20 plan will hit the limit for a week while the local model can process things 24/7.

	▲	skeledrew an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Running 24/7 doesn't make sense though, unless you're providing a service to others. But if it's just you then there has to be time taken to review+test what's being done and craft new prompts. And if that local hardware isn't decent enough it's impractical for anything serious that's interactive. Meanwhile I just take the Claude limits on stride and break, or if a week is pretty heavy then I augment with DeepSeek Flash via OpenRouter (does wonders in a single turn when I have Claude prompt it to handle implementation slices).

At $1500 that's 75 months of $20/mo Claude which are MUCH better models than you can run locally.

The point raised by this very article is that you can't depend on that. It's Flowers for Algernon As A Service.

	▲	nozzlegear an hour ago \| parent [-]
		If you already have that $1500 setup though..