Cheap Local AI Tools Are Starting to Replace Closed-Source Options
For a while, the default way to use AI has been pretty simple: subscribe to a closed-source product, open a web chat box, or pay a SaaS tool every month. That path is convenient. Closed-source products are polished, powerful, and mostly painless. You open the app and get work done. But the trade-off is becoming harder to ignore: cost, limits, opacity, and workflows locked inside someone else’s product. The shift I am watching now is this: cheap but capable local AI tools are moving from hacker toys into real alternatives. ...