DeepSeek V4 at 17x lower cost prompted a local-vs-cloud coding workflow test

DeepSeek V4 being 17x cheaper got me to actually measure what I send to cloud vs what I could run locally. the results are stupid.

Reddit user spencer_kw logged a 10-day coding workflow and retested 150 tasks on local Qwen 3.6 27B versus cloud models. Local was equivalent for 65% of tasks, acceptable for 20%, and cloud was needed for 15%; the API bill fell from $85/month to about $22. The useful signal is task-based routing, not headline model pricing alone.

Why it matters: HKR-H/K/R all pass: this is a quantified practitioner cost test, not a model launch. The single Reddit sample limits generality, so it lands at the featured threshold rather than P1.