Free LLM Tier or Self-Hosted? A 5-Question Framework (and a Probe Script)

Описание и применение

Краткая схема выбора между бесплатным API и самохостингом LLM с 5‑кратным вопросами и простым скриптом проверки.

Задача

Choosing between free LLM APIs and self-hosted models is often done by intuition, leading to cost, latency, privacy, and quality issues.

Результат

The framework and probe script enable developers to make an informed, quick decision between free and self-hosted LLM tiers, balancing cost, latency, privacy, traffic, quality, and ops overhead.

Рабочий процесс

• Ask question 1: Where does the data sleep?
• Ask question 2: What’s the latency budget?
• Ask question 3: What does the traffic look like?
• Ask question 4: Does a small model pass your gate?
• Ask question 5: Who pays the ops tax?
• If a clear answer appears, stop; otherwise continue to next question.
• Run the probe script tier_probe.py against both free API and self-hosted endpoint.
• Collect response times and content quality scores.
• Compare results in a table to decide which tier to adopt.

Доказательства

Defaulting to "self-host everything" is a status symbol, not a strategy.

Источник

You need five questions, one probe script, and about 15 minutes.

Источник