VRAMLab

Self-Hosted GPU vs Cloud LLM API Break-Even Calculator

Find the exact daily request volume and monthly token threshold where dedicated GPUs beat pay-per-token Cloud APIs—factoring in prompt-caching discounts, active rental hours, and whether your chosen GPU cluster can physically sustain the required tok/s throughput.

Workload Volume, API Rates & GPU Cost Inputs

15,000
50%
24h

30-Day FinOps Verdict & Throughput Feasibility

Cloud API is $94/mo cheaper at current traffic
30-Day Cloud API Bill
$222.75
1080.0M in · 270.0M out
30-Day Dedicated GPU Cost
$316.80
1× RTX 4090 24GB @ 24h/d
Monthly Savings (Self-Host vs API)
-$94.05
30-Day FinOps Delta
Break-Even Daily Requests
21,334
384.0M out/mo
Sustained Cluster Load 271.3%

Throughput alert: Demanded output volume exceeds 85% of sustained cluster decode capacity—increase TP devices or switch to faster HBM hardware.

Compare Live API Token Rates on DevToken → Generate vLLM / Ollama Config → Load in VRAM Calculator →

Full Accelerator & Unified Memory Specification Matrix

30-Day FinOps Verdict & Throughput Feasibility — Qwen3-32B
Accelerator / System Typical Cloud $/hr 30-Day Dedicated GPU Cost Break-Even Daily Requests Est. Decode Speed
RTX 3090 24GB $0.29/hr $209/mo 14,061 req/d OOM (TP≥2)
RTX 4090 24GB $0.44/hr $317/mo 21,334 req/d OOM (TP≥2)
RTX 5090 32GB $0.79/hr $569/mo 38,304 req/d OOM (TP≥2)
Apple M-Max 64GB $0.22/hr $158/mo 10,667 req/d 14.6 tok/s
Mac Studio 128GB $0.32/hr $230/mo 15,516 req/d 14.6 tok/s
Mac Studio 192GB $0.48/hr $346/mo 23,273 req/d 21.4 tok/s
NVIDIA A100 80GB $1.49/hr $1073/mo 72,243 req/d 61.3 tok/s
NVIDIA H100 80GB $2.39/hr $1721/mo 115,879 req/d 100.7 tok/s

Why Utilization & Prompt Caching Shift the Break-Even Curve

Pay-per-token Cloud APIs charge zero idle overhead and discount repeated system prompts by up to 75–90%, making spiky low-duty-cycle workloads far cheaper on managed endpoints than 24/7 rented GPUs.

Once steady background pipelines, coding agents, or high-concurrency RAG traffic keep an RTX 4090, A100, or H100 utilized above ~25–35% of the day, fixed hourly compute rapidly undercuts per-million output token billing. Benchmark live 460+ provider API rates directly on DevToken.