From what I've seen, most inference providers are running at a loss, so it wouldn't be at all surprising if using their services costs less that running the sam

From what I've seen, most inference providers are running at a loss, so it wouldn't be at all surprising if using their services costs less that running the same software locally. The commodification of the hardware needed is probably a larger factor, because by the time a baseline computer has enough RAM and processing power to run a desired LLM, that hardware will be efficient enough that the extra electricity usage is nominal.