If you’ve been hanging out in the self-hosting circles lately, everyone seems to declare that a powerful local AI setup is far better than paying for a cloud LLM subscription forever. The reasoning is that instead of paying $20 perpetually for Claude Pro (or a service of your choice), you could absorb a one-time investment in a beefy GPU, and enjoy all the inferencing you want on your PC. Eventually, the whole thing is sure to pay for itself, right? Well, it turns out that the answer isn’t as simple. Whether a local setup ends up being better for you depends on your use case, preferences, and how much time you spend on LLMs daily. There are also hidden costs with both cloud and local models that many people don’t consider. You’ll have to contend with trade-offs either way. What will determine the winner for you, specifically, is which trade-offs you’re more comfortable with. I did the math, which is the easy part; what’s harder is deciding what level of investment, quality, control, and privacy you’re after.