Local is Free

Local is free.

• You don’t need to pay any fees to run models locally. (local_no_fees, 7)
• When you already own adequate hardware, local models are free. (already_own_hardware, 3)

Freeness has affordances.

• Freedom to experiment and peace of mind as affordances of free inference. (peace_of_mind, 5)
• Local models can be used for testing before deployment without worrying about cost. (local_for_testing, 4)
• Local models are better for high-token tasks like batch tasks, where paid API inference would accumulate cost very quickly. (batch_task_local, 4) ^batchtasklocal4
  • Related to ^reasoningtokenexpensive1, ^smallchunkwork2

Hmm… Maybe local is not fully free?

• The counterargument in this subtheme, as electricity required to run models on a computer is technically still recurring cost. (local_still_costs, 3)