LLM Costs and Commoditization

The cluster focuses on debates about the high costs of developing, running, and using LLMs, users' reluctance to pay for proprietary models amid cheaper alternatives, and the trend toward LLMs becoming commoditized commodities.

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#6117
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Keywords

AI LLM HN OAI H100 lycee.ai GPT EU VC UI llms llm cost models anthropic ai companies inference building billions

Sample Comments

adastra22 Dec 5, 2024 View on HN

Why would I when I can get better LLM elsewhere for 1/10th the cost?

danhds Jan 28, 2025 View on HN

If I can use LLMs for free, why would I give money to OpenAI or Anthropic?

esafak Jan 8, 2026 View on HN

What do you mean? LLMs are expensive.

voidUpdate Apr 21, 2025 View on HN

Well companies lock "frontier LLMs" behind paywalls, and I don't want to pay for something that still might not be of any use to me

stavros Jul 6, 2024 View on HN

Yes, those LLMs still cost someone something.

p1esk Oct 15, 2024 View on HN

LLMs are too expensive for this

nurumaik Apr 21, 2024 View on HN

First llm users will be willing to pay to not use

adocomplete May 26, 2025 View on HN

It's not stinginess, it's value.If an LLM can teach me a language, why wouldn't I go straight to the source and use GPT or Claude and customize it to my exact needs.I feel like so many AI products these days won't be around a few years from now once more people find out that all their doing is providing a slightly different UI to what you can get directly from OAI, Anthropic, Google for cheaper and better and more tailored to you.

apsdsm Jan 22, 2026 View on HN

Probably less than the cost of an LLM doing exactly the same thing?

shreyshnaccount Mar 10, 2025 View on HN

what (hypothetically) happens when the cost to run the next giant llm exceeds the cost to hire a person for tasks like this?