DeepSeek costs OpenCode Go user $1.14/day; dual DGX breaks even in 24 years
dax from OpenCode reports that the average OpenCode Go user spent just $1.14 per day on DeepSeek Flash v4 last week, while a dual DGX setup to run the same workload costs $10,000 upfront. At that rate, it would take 24 years to break even, or 2.4 years if usage were 10x higher. The post highlights that while running models locally has its perks, cost isn't one of them.
There are a lot of reasons to want to run models locally, cost is probably not one of them.
- bewareofscams
Beware of the author of tweet, who happens to be author of OpenCode - OpenCode will leak all your data to themselves and to shady 3rd parties. Author feigned ignorance and never fixed the issue. OpenCode among other harnesses is the shadiest of all.
- perarneng
The reason to run local models is not for coding mostly it's for learning how to deploy models and tinker with self hosting. It's also for massively crunching data 24/7. Imaging having an agent analyzing constinous log streams etc .. that could be a usescse where even deepseek could add up cost.
- monster_truck
I'd really rather just pay Deepseek directly. Why wouldn't I want to support the company that trained the model?
It isn't even really worth the (minimal) ops to stand up rented MI300Xs to sell excess capacity to them even if it was minimally profitable, when I tried I was content to give API keys to friends to beat on it.
- pu_pe
That's only true if the value of keeping your data and code private is zero. And in that case, Anthropic and OpenAI subscription plans may be even cheaper per day.
- dhchun1203
Rippling had a writeup on this. 40% of R&D payroll going to tokens, one engineer
at $50k/month. They got it down 37% just by routing cheap stuff to cheap models,
no usage cut.