The good enough alternative models are here or will be soon, depending on your definition of good enough. MiniMax-M2.5 looks really competitive and its a tenth of the cost of Sonnet-4.6 (they also have subscriptions).
Running locally is going to require a lot of memory, compute, and energy for the foreseeable future which makes it really hard to compete with ~$20/mo subscriptions.
Running locally is going to require a lot of memory, compute, and energy for the foreseeable future which makes it really hard to compete with ~$20/mo subscriptions.