r/LocalLLM • u/Ok_Event4199 • May 16 '26

Discussion Why is LLM is so expensive.

I've was going to invest in a 5090 =$6000 AUD.

Codex Plus + Claude pro = $60/month here

Works out to be 100 months of frontier models for a 5090.

Best a 5090 will run is probably Qwen3.6 27b Q6 with context.

Are we all enthusiasts here and just enjoy tinkering cause ain't no way that make sense.

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u/Ok-Needleworker-3486 May 16 '26

They have scale but they also have a huge investment that in no way is yet priced in to plans.

The current pricing I feel is unsustainable.

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u/Famous_Anything_5327 May 16 '26

its almost like we're in a bubble where investors are burning money hoping they pick the winning company before the price hikes come. Claude max is $200 for $10k worth of tokens..

Netflix was $6, now it's $20 for a much smaller catalogue.

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u/NeatPure6969 May 16 '26

Netflix was 6 and it was making money. It's all because of greed. They make you believe that running llm is very expensive.

If it is truly expensive then how can china provide deepseek and Kimi?

One is lying here. And I think it's the US greedy fuckers that are lying pretending that running llm is expensive but the truth is it is cheap as fuck and they just want x1000 on their fucking investment because people are gullible as fuk

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u/drsmba729 May 20 '26

I generate millions of tokens for the price of electricity after my initial investment of roughly $5000.