Local AI test drive cost: $10 an hour
You pay $10 for each hour you use the machine, and nothing else. Value added tax is added where it applies. That suits what this is for: you are answering a purchasing question worth a few thousand dollars, and the answer usually arrives in an afternoon rather than a quarter.
What you actually pay
One rate, and two things you control.
$10 an hour, whichever configuration
The machine, the open model and the size of working memory for the conversation do not change the rate. You should pick the configuration that answers your question, not the one that looks cheapest, so we removed the reason to do otherwise.
How many hours you use
Most people need one or two, so most test drives cost $10 or $10 twice over. You are not buying capacity you might grow into; you are buying enough time to run your own tasks, look at what came back, and change your mind once.
Whether you want us in the room
The rate buys a web address, a key and a working machine. If you would rather somebody sat with you, prepared the workload, or helped you buy and set up a machine of your own afterwards, that is separate work, scoped and priced on its own terms. It is never folded quietly into the hourly rate.
What is included, and where we stop
There is a clear line down the middle. We are responsible for the machine and for it being ready. You are responsible for the work you run on it and for the decision at the end.
We handle
- Running the machine and getting it into a known-good state
- Installing and serving the open model, and checking it answers before you start
- A normal endpoint: a web address and a key, nothing proprietary
- Telling you exactly which machine, model and serving software you are testing
- Shutting the machine down when your time is up
You bring
- The tool you already work in, and the ability to point it at an endpoint
- A workload that answers your question
- What a good result would look like, decided before you start rather than after
- The judgement at the end: whether a machine of your own is worth buying
What you keep afterwards
Whatever you decide, you should be able to explain the decision to someone else without us in the room.
- The exact identity of what you tested: machine, open model and serving software, pinned to the versions you ran against
- Your own results, the conditions they were produced under, and the limits we know about
- Enough detail to set the same thing up again on a machine you own
Questions about cost
Why $10 an hour, when the hardware rents for a fraction of that?
Because you are not buying compute, you are buying an answer to a purchasing decision worth a few thousand dollars. The rate covers running the machine, preparing it, serving a known-good model on it, checking it answers before you start, and tearing it down afterwards, plus the fact that only a handful of these machines exist at any one time. If what you want is cheap tokens, several providers will serve you better and we will point you at them.
Is this the cheapest way to use an open model?
No, and it is not meant to be. Several providers will serve you the same open models for a fraction of $10 an hour. What they cannot tell you is how the model behaves on one specific desktop machine you are thinking of buying, because they do not run it on one. That is the only thing you are paying us for.
Is there a free trial?
Not as a published offer. A handful of these machines exist at any one time, so a free tier would mean the people making a real purchasing decision queue behind people who are not. If you have a live decision and a workload to run, say so when you get in touch.
What if the test drive tells us not to buy?
Then it did its job, and it did it for the price of an afternoon instead of the price of a machine. You keep the configuration details and your own results either way, so you can show what you tested and why you decided as you did.
Can you help us buy and set up a machine afterwards?
Yes, and it is separate work. Purchasing, configuring and integrating a machine has a different shape, a different risk and a different price from an hour of access, so we scope it with you on its own terms. We are deliberately not offering round-the-clock support or service guarantees at this stage, and we would rather tell you that now than discover it together later.
Pick the setup you want to test
Choose the hardware and the model from our prepared setups, connect the tool you use today and run the work you want to test. Most questions are answered in one or two hours.
Self-service booking is being built; until it opens, you request your setup through the contact form.
Still open, and dated when it closes
- Self-service booking, which is being built; until it opens, setups are requested through the contact form
- Service levels, weekend support and security undertakings, which we do not offer and will not pretend to
- Currencies other than the dollar, the pound, the euro and the real, and any volume or repeat-customer terms