Does self-hosting on the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB beat OpenAI API costs? The answer depends on utilisation. Here is the math for dedicated hosting.
Contents
Capacity
Llama 3 8B FP8 on 5060 Ti at 50% average utilisation produces roughly:
- Output tokens: ~700M/month
- Input tokens (3:1 ratio): ~2.1B/month
OpenAI Equivalent
Q2 2026 pricing (approximate):
| Model | Input/M | Output/M | Your traffic cost/month |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-4o-mini | $0.15 | $0.60 | ~$735 |
| GPT-4o | $2.50 | $10 | ~$12,250 |
| GPT-4.1-nano | $0.10 | $0.40 | ~$490 |
Break-Even
At ~£300/month for the 5060 Ti, break-even versus GPT-4o-mini comes at ~35-40% utilisation. Above that, dedicated is cheaper. Versus GPT-4o, dedicated is always cheaper once you reach any meaningful volume.
Quality Caveat
Llama 3 8B is not GPT-4o quality. For equivalent quality comparison:
- Llama 3 8B ≈ GPT-4o-mini on most tasks
- Qwen 14B ≈ GPT-4o-mini to mid-GPT-4o on some tasks
- For GPT-4o-class quality you need 70B+ models (step up to 6000 Pro)
For the bigger picture see break-even analysis.
Self-Hosted Economics
Fixed monthly cost replaces variable API spend. UK dedicated hosting.
Order the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB
