LLM subscriptions compound to thousands a year — is self-hosting AI's future?
Ok_Pay1599 · reddit · 2026-09-03
A Substack essay arguing LLM subscriptions compound fast: $20/month is $240/year, and heavy users at $200/month pay $2,400/year. Meanwhile usage is heavily subsidized — OpenAI lost $5B in 2024, Anthropic $5.3B, and Perplexity spends 164% of revenue on AWS, Anthropic and OpenAI. The author frames this as a desperate race for survival and argues self-hosting may be the future of AI — just not yet.
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