How Much Does It Actually Cost to Run a Local LLM? (Euros per Million Tokens, Measured)

Understanding the true cost of local LLM deployment is critical for practitioners evaluating whether on-device or self-hosted inference makes financial sense. This article provides measured data on per-token costs in euros, offering concrete benchmarks that go beyond theoretical calculations.

For teams deciding between cloud APIs and local infrastructure, having accurate cost data is essential. This analysis helps quantify the break-even point where local deployment becomes more economical than commercial services, accounting for hardware amortization, electricity, and maintenance overhead.

The measured approach—rather than estimated costs—makes this particularly valuable for infrastructure planning and ROI calculations in production environments.

Source: Towards Data Science · Relevance: 9/10