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

说明与用途

一个5个问题的快速框架和45行探测脚本，帮助开发者在免费LLM API和自托管模型之间做出决策。

问题

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

结果

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.

工作流

• 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.

证据

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

来源

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

来源