[fragmede]

How good do you want it to be? For a close to ChatGPT today (April, 2026), you're still looking at a system with 7xH200+chassis, which will run you $300, or a GB200 NV72, which is $2-3 million. OTOH, a Qwen3.6 quantized model can be run on $10,000 (high end Mac) or $1,000 (Mac mini) worth of hardware. Even a Pixel 10 Pro cellphone ($1,000) can run useful models locally.

[dzink]

Go to Open Router, ask your own in investigative prompt that meets your needs to all the top open models. See how they do. Then notice if you can run any of those locally. Repeat at least once a month.

[JKCalhoun]

Thanks, BTW, now I have learned about OpenRouter.

It doesn't look like they have a way to filter down to "open" models. By this of course I mean "downloadable, local models".

I suppose if you know the "family" (Gemma, Qwen, etc.), I can just go to those models and test…

I've simply been pulling down what is popular from the LM Studio front end (and what runs on my hardware) and testing in situ.