Ask HN: Has anyone replaced Claude/GPT with a local model for daily coding?

Post by reassess_blind » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 12:38 PM UTC

NamlchakKhandro wrote: post #478

codinhood wrote: post #26

I don't think you're going to get many "true" answers to this. The opportunity cost of not using the latest and best models is just too much right now. Every month I research this and come to the same conclusion: the time, effort, and cost required to get local models (and the coding tools around them) to perform even close to Claude Code with sonnet/opus just not worth it right now. If it was, it would be distributi…

Thinking Claude is leading edge... I really think you need to re-evaluate what you research you think you're doing. Claude Code is not Claude Opus/Sonnet/Haiku.

Post by picofarad » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 12:40 PM UTC

rootlocus wrote: post #100

horsawlarway wrote: post #49

For personal use, yes. I replaced a $100/m subscription to claude in favor of running pi harness pointed at unsloth studio, using both qwen (unsloth/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-MTP-GGUF) and gemma (unsloth/gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-GGUF) models, depending on my mood. I have a machine I built about 5 years ago with dual RTX3090s in it (I was going to build a new gaming machine anyways, and the llama release had just dropped so I tacked…

2x RTX3090 are around $4400. Without any electricity costs or other parts, that's 3.6 years of $100/m claude.

Post by adam_patarino » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 12:42 PM UTC

Post by slvnx » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 12:50 PM UTC

thrownaway561 wrote: post #229

I just use DeepSeekV4 Fast... It's cheap as hell. Currently my monthly usage has been 67M Ouput 51M Input Total $0.83 dollar. I honestly don't understand why people just don't use DeepSeek.

Post by bluGill » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 1:02 PM UTC

incrudible wrote: post #456

femto113 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the distinction is that your rice only needs to be edible once, while your code may need to last for decades. Using AI to code anything I could comfortably throw away if needed is a lot less fraught than letting it make choices that I and anybody who inherits the code is gonna have to live with, especially if by outsourcing those choices I reduce my understanding of the implications of those choices.

I think the idea that code should last decades is now questionable, if not problematic. If we can now produce code at 10x the rate, that means we can have 10x more code (probably not desirable) or we can have 10x as many revisions. Whoever inherits the code can have it rewritten to their liking and understanding. Nothing helps better in understanding a system than to rebuild it, even if just by handholding an LLM.