Migrate from Azure OpenAI to Dedicated GPU: Savings Calculator
How much can you save by moving from Azure OpenAI (Managed OpenAI API) to a dedicated GPU server?
Projected Savings
Azure OpenAI charges Microsoft markup on top of OpenAI pricing — you are paying two margins instead of one. Teams locked into Azure for compliance reasons often assume there is no alternative, but dedicated hardware provides equivalent data sovereignty at a fraction of the cost. At £550/month:
- £441/month (80% reduction)
- £5,292/year in total savings
Savings by Current Azure OpenAI Spend
| Current Azure OpenAI Spend | GigaGPU RTX 5080 Cost | Monthly Savings | Annual Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| £100/mo | £109/mo | API cheaper at this spend | — |
| £250/mo | £109/mo | £141/mo | £1,692/yr |
| £500/mo | £109/mo | £391/mo | £4,692/yr |
| £1000/mo | £109/mo | £891/mo | £10,692/yr |
| £2500/mo | £109/mo | £2391/mo | £28,692/yr |
| £5000/mo | £109/mo | £4891/mo | £58,692/yr |
GigaGPU pricing is fixed monthly. No per-token, per-image, or per-request fees.
The Double-Margin Problem
Azure OpenAI applies Microsoft markup to OpenAI pricing — you pay OpenAI’s per-token rate plus Azure’s platform fee. For teams who chose Azure OpenAI specifically for data residency and compliance, GigaGPU offers a dedicated alternative with equivalent data sovereignty. Your server is exclusively yours, your data stays on your hardware, and you control the compliance posture without paying two vendors for the privilege.
Enterprise Compliance Without Enterprise Markup
- Dedicated hardware: A full RTX 5080 server exclusively for your workloads. No sharing, no noisy neighbours.
- Recommended alternative: LLaMA 3 70B or Mixtral 8x7B delivers comparable quality to Managed OpenAI API for most production use cases.
- Fixed pricing: £109/month regardless of how many tokens, images, or requests you process.
- Full control: SSH access, custom model deployment, fine-tuning capability, no vendor lock-in.
- Data sovereignty: Your data stays on your server. No third-party data processing or logging.
Migrating Away from Azure
- Audit current usage: Export your Azure OpenAI usage data from the Azure portal — separate model costs from other Azure services.
- Select your GPU server: Based on your throughput needs, choose from GigaGPU dedicated plans starting at £109/month.
- Deploy your model: GigaGPU servers come with CUDA, Docker, and inference frameworks pre-installed. Deploy LLaMA 3 70B or Mixtral 8x7B in under 15 minutes.
- Update API endpoints: Azure OpenAI uses OpenAI-compatible endpoints with Azure-specific authentication. Swap the Azure client for a standard OpenAI client pointing to your GigaGPU server.
- Run parallel testing: Run both Azure OpenAI and your self-hosted model in parallel for 1-2 weeks to validate quality and performance.
- Cut over: Once validated, switch fully to your dedicated server and decommission your Azure OpenAI deployment.
API Transition
Azure OpenAI uses a modified OpenAI API format with Azure-specific headers and deployment names. GigaGPU servers support standard OpenAI-compatible endpoints. Migration requires updating your client configuration — replacing Azure-specific parameters with a standard base URL and key. Application logic remains unchanged.
Get Compliance Without the Microsoft Tax
Stop paying double margins. Get a dedicated RTX 5080 server for £109/month with equivalent data sovereignty.
