Table of Contents
Sometimes self-hosted stops making sense. Recognising the signal early saves money and ops headaches.
TL;DR
Signs to move back to hosted APIs: traffic dropped below break-even, ops team can't keep up, regulatory landscape changed, better hosted options launched. Migrate gradually via LiteLLM router.
Signs
- Monthly traffic dropped below break-even (e.g., <500M tokens/mo on a 5090)
- On-call burden exceeds 1 hour/week consistently
- Eval scores plateaued or regressed
- Hosted API offering catches up on price (e.g., DeepSeek API at £0.20/1M)
- Regulatory exemption granted (e.g., DPA finalised with hosted provider)
Migration back
- Add hosted backend to LiteLLM router
- Shift 10% traffic, eval, scale up
- Decommission dedicated server when traffic share <5%
Verdict
Self-hosting isn't a religion. It's a deployment shape that matches certain conditions. When conditions change, change shape.
Bottom line
Don't commit forever. Reassess yearly. See dedicated vs cloud.
