I agree with what you what you have written, which is why I would never pay a subscription to an external AI provider.

I prefer to run inference on my own HW, with a harness that I control, so I can choose myself what compromise between speed and the quality of the results is appropriate for my needs.

When I have complete control, resulting in predictable performance, I can work more efficiently, even with slower HW and with somewhat inferior models, than when I am at the mercy of an external provider.