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Replaced $40/month in AI API subscriptions with self-hosted Ollama + n8n (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Quick post about a change I made that's worked out well.

I was using OpenAI API for automations in n8n — email summaries, content drafts, that kind of thing. Was spending ~$40/month.

Switched everything to Ollama running locally. The migration was pretty straightforward since n8n just hits an HTTP endpoint. Changed the URL from api.openai.com to localhost:11434 and updated the request format.

For most tasks (summarization, classification, drafting) the local models are good enough. Complex reasoning is worse but I don't need that for automation workflows.

Hardware: i7 with 16GB RAM, running Llama 3 8B. Plenty fast for async tasks.

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[–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

While this is correct, sometimes it can be free. I live in a cold climate, and over the winter I hooked up a folding@home computer in my office to keep things a bit warmer. Computers are 100% as efficient as a space heater.

Of course now that it's getting warm things are changing. I'm actually in the middle of doing my last folding@home tasks until the temps drop next fall.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    Even in very cold regions heat pumps maintain a COP>1, so even running it as a space heater may not be free if you have access to a more efficient alternative. Also that may be a responsible justification for Folding@Home, but I doubt OP is turning off their LLM in the summer.

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