Written by Jakub Rusinowski · Last updated 2026-07-12 · Hardware figures computed by our VRAM engine
If you already own a capable GPU, a local coding agent costs a few dollars a month in electricity versus $120/year for Copilot Pro or $240/year for Cursor Pro — an immediate win. If you are buying hardware for it, a used RTX 3090 breaks even against Cursor in roughly three years, so buy for privacy and control rather than savings. The economics flip decisively for teams: one shared GPU box undercuts per-seat subscriptions within the first year.
Three ways to pay for AI coding help in 2026: flat subscriptions (Copilot Pro at $10/month, Cursor Pro at $20/month), metered API usage (agent tools like Cline pointed at frontier models — anywhere from $10 to hundreds per month depending on how hard you drive them), and local hardware you own. This page prices all three honestly — including the cases where local *loses*.
Scope note: this is the subscription comparison. If you're weighing local against per-token API pricing for the same open models, that's a different calculation with its own interactive tool — our local vs cloud AI for coding comparison and the cost calculator cover it.
| Cost line | Local (owned 24 GB GPU) | Local (buying used 3090) | Copilot Pro | Cursor Pro | API-metered agent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Up-front | $0 | ~$700 used | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Monthly | ~$3–6 electricity | ~$3–6 electricity | $10 | $20 | $10–200+ (usage) |
| Year 1 | ~$50 | ~$760 | $120 | $240 | $120–2,400 |
| Year 3 | ~$150 | ~$860 | $360 | $720 | $360–7,200 |
| Usage caps | None | None | Credit-limited | Rate/credit-limited | Your wallet |
| Code leaves machine | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Electricity assumes a ~350 W card under load a few hours daily at $0.15/kWh — coding assistants idle most of the time, so real draw is far below gaming duty cycles. Full methodology lives in our electricity cost guide.
Subscriptions win on quality-per-dollar for casual use. $10/month buys Copilot backed by frontier models with zero setup. If you code a few hours a week and your employer doesn't care where the code goes, that's hard to beat — and this site won't pretend otherwise.
Local wins on privacy, caps, and already-owned hardware. The moment code can't leave the building (client NDAs, unreleased products, regulated industries), subscriptions stop being an option at any price. And the "usage cap" row matters more since mid-2026: both Copilot and Cursor now meter their best models with credits — agentic workflows chew through those fast, pushing effective costs well past sticker price. A local model has no meter.
API-metered agents win for burst intensity. A weekend of hard agentic work against a frontier API might cost $30 and outperform anything local. The trap is making it the *daily* driver: agent loops burn 50–100K tokens per task, and daily use at that rate dwarfs every other column. The pattern that wins: local for the inner loop, API for the hard 5% — it caps your downside in both directions.
Per-seat pricing scales linearly; hardware doesn't. Ten developers on Copilot Business (~$19/seat) run about $2,280/year, forever. One RTX 4090 box (~$2,000 all-in) running Tabby serves that team's completions — payback inside year one, and the compliance story ("code never leaves the network") comes free. This is the strongest pure-economics case for local coding AI, and it's the one CFOs actually approve. Details and caveats in the local vs cloud for small teams comparison.
Both cards below hit the 24 GB tier this page prices: the used 3090 for the shortest payback, the 4090 for speed and warranty.
Undecided? A rented 24 GB card costs less than one month of Cursor and answers the question with your own repo.
Full list on the cloud AI directory.