When Local AI Beats the API: The Cost Crossover (August 2026)
The monthly token volume at which a self-hosted model becomes cheaper than paying per token to GPT-5, Claude, or Gemini, and the workloads that never get there.
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The monthly token volume at which a self-hosted model becomes cheaper than paying per token to GPT-5, Claude, or Gemini, and the workloads that never get there.
What sits at the top of the field right now, hosted or downloadable, with every licence, price and index score re-read from a primary source today.
SpaceXAI's Grok 4.5 lands at $2 input and $6 output per million tokens - cheaper than Claude Opus 4.7's $5/$25 and OpenAI's top GPT-5.5 at $5/$30.