Self-Hosted Large Models vs. Cloud APIs: How to Route Requests Intelligently
This article compares the trade-offs between self-hosted large language models and cloud APIs in terms of data privacy, cost, latency, and capabilities. It outlines the hardware requirements (such as VRAM and quantization) for open-source deployable models, discusses typical technology stacks, and uses n8n as an example to demonstrate how to build hybrid routing workflows that dynamically distribute requests between on-premises and cloud-based models based on task sensitivity, complexity, or compliance requirements.