Well, since you "freelance using GPT" and you expressed concern that you'd stop being able to make a profit if you had to pay API prices, I figured that swapping an off-the-shelf graphics card into a gaming rig might be a reasonable way to stay in the black. If it came to that. And the software setup on Linux is just compiling and installing llama-server, which shouldn't be enough to stop any programmer trying to make a living.
My larger point is that while frontier tokens are a near-monopoly and who knows what they really cost, many real-world workflows can be run using commodity tokens, or even served in-house by anyone who can afford to hire US or EU programmers. And if you're willing to settle for what would have been a state-of-the-art coding model in October 2025, commodity tokens are close to free.
Or you could just take your credit card and spend $20 on credits at https://openrouter.ai/deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash. I'm not sure that I could manage to spend even a $1/day at those rates.
My larger point is that while frontier tokens are a near-monopoly and who knows what they really cost, many real-world workflows can be run using commodity tokens, or even served in-house by anyone who can afford to hire US or EU programmers. And if you're willing to settle for what would have been a state-of-the-art coding model in October 2025, commodity tokens are close to free.