Show HN: Sunk Cost – How long until a local LLM rig pays for itself?
Show HN tool 'Sunk Cost' calculates when a local LLM rig breaks even versus falling API prices, factoring electricity cost and inference speed.
A Hacker News Show HN project called Sunk Cost models the payback period of buying local LLM hardware instead of paying API prices. Users can adjust assumptions like electricity cost ($/kWh) and API speed (tokens/second), and the model assumes API prices keep falling. Where local speed is unmeasured, it is estimated from memory bandwidth divided by bytes read per token, and labelled as an estimate.
- Compares total cost of a local LLM rig against per-token API pricing
- Adjustable inputs: electricity $/kWh and API speed in tokens/sec
- Assumes API prices continue declining over time
- Local speed estimated via memory bandwidth ÷ bytes read per token when unmeasured
From the original article
1 min read at sunkcost.ai
Where nothing has been measured, local speed is estimated as memory bandwidth ÷ bytes read per token × , and labelled as such. API speed only affects the time comparison.
By rlindsey123 · sunkcost.ai
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