Can anyone recommend me a viable alternative to these clowns? I would like to move my work (excel and light coding) off the big guys. My computer isn’t very powerful though so I need to upgrade or find hosted models (host my own?) that won’t steal my sensitive data?

Edit: miss me with the downvotes. These guys are clowns. I want alternatives. Thank you to everyone offering help!

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marcuskaz 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

OpenRouter or Fireworks are two of many that allow you to run numerous different models. You can use open code harnesses like Pi or Opencode that connect easily to these services.

https://openrouter.ai/

https://fireworks.ai/

http://pi.dev/

https://opencode.ai/

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bix6 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Thank you! Is there one you’d recommend in particular when working with sensitive data?

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tolugenius 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You might want to consider a local setup? Personally I do model + llama.cpp + Pi + tmux, that's as barebones as you can get and everything is great. I also use opencode for bigger task, I could probably hook that to a local model but I'm not sure (still new to this). But if you work with sensitive data you need a local setup purely.

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bix6 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I am interested in a local setup but whenever I read about it, it seems the money is better spent on cloud inference since even with thousands of dollars of my own hardware I wouldn’t have frontier like capability? I am bad at choosing models though (I just throw everything at Opus atm).

	▲	tolugenius 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well yes you won't have frontier capability but that doesn't mean you'd have nothing, I'm not sure what you have but I know there are tools that let you see what models (and their quant variants) you can safely run, I'd look into that first and see what options you have and what you're willing to delegate to a smaller model vs use opus for. Maybe opus to plan vs smaller models for focused implementation, or what works for you workflow and needs.

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jmtulloss 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’m biased (my wife works there) but Fireworks or another US-based inference provider is going to be a better fit than OpenRouter. Fireworks has zero data retention by default[1] and has tools to make it easy to run your existing harness against open models [2]

OpenRouter isn’t a provider, they route to other providers, so you would need to specify which ones you’re comfortable with anyway.

[1]:https://docs.fireworks.ai/guides/security_compliance/data_ha...

[2]:https://fireworks.ai/nexus

	▲	bix6 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Fantastic thank you!

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SkyBelow 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think this would depend upon the level of sensitive data.

For OpenRouter, you can setup an API key and limit it to only models that claim to not train on data, but that is just a claim. You can then use trust to judge which providers will honor that claim.

But if the data is really sensitive, you might want either a local model or a business subscription with some big name in the US that legally promises no data training.

So are we talking some app idea you are playing around with, or files filled with PHI/PII that you have legal mandates to safeguard? If the latter, I would stick to only provider with enterprise agreements to not store/train on the data. Even the ones who promise no training are likely storing the data for monitoring for abuse or such short term.

	▲	bix6 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		For anything sensitive I have Claude business (team?) which (claims) no training but I would like to find an alternative for them. I’m just really tired of supporting Anthropic each month (same feelings for all the major providers).

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Roark66 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Openrouter is not ideal, because you don't know who they send your traffic to and there are rumours of vendors cheating by providing quantized models.

I'm very happy with Deepinfra. Less model coverage, but good prices and quite fast.

However I have to caution you about one thing.

No one will give you as many input tokens for so little money as Claude Max x5 (maybe x20 too, I use x5).

I tend to use 1.1B to 1.4B a week about 0.8-1B cached. Even with cache were talking thousands of $ in API prices a week. Hundreds if we're talking cheap cloud like Deepinfra.

However, local AI well setup is actually a good alternative for this if Claude Max was unavailable.

For example my system a ryzen 7950x 192GB ram, 5x rtx3090 plus an rtx5060 ti 16gb. (3 rtx3090 cards via usb4 egpu dock). Let's me run Qwen3.8-Flash-Next with 3slots (no rtx5060 used) at 55tok/s decode dropping to 50 at the end of a 260k context, 1200tok/s refill dropping to 950 at the end of context.

With RAM and ssd cashing and 80% cache were talking on the order of 4B a week could be ingested by this setup (roughly) if it was running 24/7. I found 6 interactive cloud code sessions are fairly pleasant with this 3 user setup.

If I include the rtx5060 in the mix I can bump to 5 users, but it slows down by about 15% (note the speeds are give are for one active user, multiple users at once see maybe 70% of tgat per user so aggregate is much higher in multi user setup).

So in theory I should be able to run 10 cloud code sessions. Although I'm testing CC alternative now (pi with own plugins) because this model, while multimodal has only 260k context 30k of which CC eats on the getgo.

Many people say local AI makes no sense financially. But in the event you process huge inputs that are often cached it does make sense.

	▲	Ciantic 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Openrouter is not ideal, because you don't know who they send your traffic to and there are rumours of vendors cheating by providing quantized models. OpenRouter allows to make an API key locked to certain provider, I do that myself.
	▲	bix6 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I haven’t heard of Deepinfra so I’ll check them out! I think your local setup would be a bit much for me capability / price wise. But maybe I can find a scaled down version. I don’t need insane tok/s. Oftentimes I just let things run and come back later.

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andrewla 39 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://www.qubrid.com/ai-appliances/qubrid-llm-gen-ai-appli...

This is crazy but honestly very tempting at this point.

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cmiles8 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A lot of companies are starting to run towards open models on walled off infra. There might be a moat to be had in really good infra-as-a-service for hosting models, but there’s zero moat to be had in the models themselves. Which is a problem for those trying to convince people a proprietary model company should be worth trillions.

	▲	bix6 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I am interested in running my own infra but the cost doesn’t seem worth it? Have you setup something local that’s viable?
	▲	dgellow 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That’s an advantage, not a moat

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myaccountonhn 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Opencode go for 10$ a month is fantastic. Just use it with Glm5.2-flash.

	▲	akazantsev 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's better to buy models directly from providers that guarantee the quality of their quantization. Otherwise, model quality is a gamble. You can pay the same $10 on Novita or with any other provider.
	▲	bix6 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I’ll take a look thank you!