I used to have a $20/mo ChatGPT subscription and now I spend $12 per year using Kimi models on OpenRouter, and that's with zero-data-retention-only providers (some models sometimes have free providers with scary tracking). Maybe I just don't use that many tokens, I don't fill the context with more than what's needed for a specific request, but it goes to show how these subscriptions can be an absolute ripoff. The thought of spending 200x that is insane to me

Maybe. But for now it's fascinating how $200/month has kind of become a normal tier.

It's similar to how AirPods normalised all of us having $300+ headphones. All of us would have scoffed at the idea a decade ago.

Not everyone can run local models. It is also expensive will be outdated soon as the model evolves.

Not while the hardware required to run a local model at an acceptable speed costs way more than $200.

Guess what, the big players are hoarding all the RAM and GPUs so that other people can't afford decent hardware. It's working out beautifully for them!