Answer public reviews in the reviewer's language

The API is cheaper per token. Here is why our customers don't use it.

We will not pretend otherwise: renting a model by the token from a serverless API costs less per million tokens than a card we run for you. We show that price on every use-case page. What it does not include is the part a shop with a customer database actually pays for.

1. 01

   Your data never leaves hardware you can point at

   A serverless "we don't retain your data" is a clause in a contract. Running the model on a card in Amsterdam is a fact of architecture: your catalogue, tickets and customer records are never sent to a third party at all. For a GDPR audit, that is the difference between a promise and a floor plan.

2. 02

   The price cannot move without your say-so

   A serverless rate card is somebody else's lever. The provider can raise the price, retire the model, or change the terms, and your cost moves with it. The same model on the same card costs the same next year — you own the number.

3. 03

   The model cannot be taken away

   Hosted APIs deprecate models on their own schedule; the one you built on can be gone in a quarter. An open-weight model on your own hardware runs for as long as you keep the lights on. No vendor can end-of-life it out from under you.

And the price gap closes with volume: past a card you keep busy — very roughly four billion tokens a month — owning is cheaper outright, even before the three reasons above.