AI Answer Library
Short answer
The total cost of a self-hosted LLM breaks into three parts — hardware, implementation and ongoing operations — and hardware usually accounts for more than half. The real dividing line is model size. As of August 2026 in mainland China, a single-GPU box for 7B–14B models sits in the tens of thousands of RMB, a multi-GPU chassis for 70B-class models in the hundreds of thousands, and trillion-parameter MoE models require a cluster. On the software side, open-weight models plus a self-hosted delivery are usually a one-off buy-out — for example YGG lists its Token Gateway at ¥98,000.
The table below reflects publicly observable market conditions in mainland China as of August 2026, estimated for an internal inference service supporting a single business line. It is meant for order-of-magnitude judgement, not as a quote: GPU prices swing with supply, export controls and exchange rates, and any tier can move more than 30% within six months. Re-quote before you sign.
| Deployment tier | Hardware outlay (order of magnitude) | Software and implementation | Fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry, single GPU: quantised 7B–14B models | One single-GPU workstation or server, tens of thousands of RMB | No licence fee on open weights; implementation priced per project, and doable in-house | Departmental Q&A, document summarisation, internal pilots |
| Single chassis, multi-GPU: 32B–70B dense models | A 4–8 GPU chassis, hundreds of thousands of RMB | Same licensing, but serving-stack tuning and load testing usually need outside help | Company-wide RAG, agent assist, coding assistants |
| Multi-node cluster: trillion-parameter MoE or high concurrency | Multiple chassis plus high-speed interconnect, from seven figures RMB | Requires scheduling, observability, staged rollout and capacity planning; engineering share rises sharply | Customer-facing high-concurrency workloads, shared multi-team platforms |
| No GPUs: hosted model APIs behind a private gateway | No upfront hardware; billed by usage or instance hours | Gateway software is typically bought outright — YGG lists its Token Gateway at ¥98,000 one-off, servers not included | Requirements still in flux; prove the use case before committing to on-prem |
First, power and facilities: a fully loaded multi-GPU chassis draws several kilowatts, and a normal office rack often lacks the power and cooling — the retrofit can cost more than a server. Second, operations staff: a model service is not install-and-forget; someone must own upgrades, monitoring and recovery, and for small teams this is usually the largest hidden cost. Third, model refreshes: open-weight families ship a new generation every three to six months, and deciding whether to move, how to stage it, and whether prompts need retuning is continuous work. Fourth, data governance: cleaning the corpus, settling document versions and mapping permissions routinely takes longer than the deployment itself, and cannot be outsourced to a hardware vendor. Fifth, security and compliance: audit logging, redaction and regulatory review grow with the industry you are in.
The arithmetic is simple: convert your projected annual call volume into hosted-API spend, multiply by three, and compare against hardware plus implementation plus three years of operations. With low, spiky volume across a handful of use cases, the hosted API almost always wins. With high, steady volume reused across business lines — or token-heavy work such as long-document processing — self-hosting crosses over at some point. More often, though, the deciding factor is not money: if the data legally cannot leave your network or your jurisdiction, this stops being a cost question and becomes a compliance question, and self-hosting is the only option. Then the right question is not "is it worth it" but "what is the smallest compliant footprint that works".
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Ygg Lab Token — API Quota Gateway
Every model call, clear and in control — nine upstream provider types behind a single sk- key, with quota, logs and billing you own.
Meeting Management — Private-Deployed Platform
A ¥19,800 perpetually licensed, self-hosted meeting platform — 8 modules, any BCP 47 language, 4-channel international payment, AI site builder + Copilot, dual-QR check-in. v0.6.0 in production.