Local LLM TCO Calculator

Inputs

Adjust the hardware, duty cycle, power draw, and comparison assumptions used in the estimate.

Hardware Configuration

Hardware Price ($)

Useful Lifespan (Years)

On-Time (Hours/Day)

Duty Cycle (% generating)

Power Consumption

Inference Power (Watts)

Idle Power (Watts)

Electricity Rate ($/kWh)

Performance Benchmarks

Sustained TPS (Gen Speed)

API & Subscription Comparison

Cloud Provider (Token Tier)

Monthly Subscription

Results

                            Marginal Cost (Elec/1M):
                            $0.00
                        
                            Fully Loaded ($/1M):
                            $0.00
                        
                            Total Monthly TCO:
                            $0.00
                        
                            Est. Monthly Tokens:
                            0.0M

Electricity Portion: $0.00

Hardware Portion: $0.00

Token-for-Token (Fully Loaded)

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Out): $0.00 vs Local $0.00

Throughput & Wall-Clock Time

Local — tok/s — per 1M tokens

Cloud (typical) — tok/s — per 1M tokens

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Monthly TCO vs Plan

Ownership: $--- vs Subscription

What this captures: Hardware amortization, electricity, estimated token output, and a direct cost-per-million comparison against the selected cloud default.

What this does not capture: Model quality, latency variance, cooling, networking, setup time, support burden, compliance requirements, credits, or negotiated vendor pricing. Treat the cloud defaults as placeholders and verify current numbers before relying on them.

Calculation logic: "Marginal Cost" is the extra electricity cost of generation (Active minus Idle power). "Fully Loaded" amortizes hardware + total electricity over the estimated monthly token volume — this is the apples-to-apples comparison against cloud $/M output prices, which themselves include the provider's hardware, infra, and margin.

Estimates only — use at your own risk

This calculator produces rough financial and throughput estimates based on the values you enter and a small set of simplifying assumptions. It does not model real-world variation in electricity tariffs (time-of-use, demand charges, taxes), hardware depreciation curves, cooling overhead, networking, software licensing, model accuracy, regulatory or compliance costs, downtime, support, opportunity cost of operator time, or the actual sustained throughput of any cloud provider in your region.

Cloud per-token prices and "typical" cloud throughput values shown here are illustrative defaults captured at the time of authoring; published prices, model availability, rate limits, and streaming speeds change frequently. Verify current pricing and benchmark real performance before making any purchasing, contracting, capacity-planning, or budgeting decision.

No warranty or liability. The tool is provided as-is, with no warranty of accuracy, fitness, or merchantability. The author and maintainers accept no responsibility or liability for any loss, damage, business decision, missed savings, contractual exposure, hardware failure, vendor selection, downtime, or other consequence arising from use of this tool or its output. Independently verify all figures with vendor invoices, measured power draw, and current published pricing before acting on them.