When the 2019 Mac Pro came out, it was "amazing" how many still photography YouTubers all got launch day deliveries of the same BTO Mac Pro, with exactly the same spec:
18 core CPU, 384GB memory, Vega II Duo GPU and an 8TB SSD.
Or, more likely, Apple worked with them and made sure each of them had this Mac on launch day, while they waited for the model they actually ordered. Because they sure as hell didn't need an $18,000 computer for Lightroom.
Nowadays I fire off async jobs that involve 1000s of requests, billion of tokens, yet it costs basically the same as if I didn't.
Maybe it takes a different type of person, than the one I am, but all these "pay-as-you-go"/tokens/credits platforms make me nervous to use, and I end up not using it or spending time trying to "optimize", while investing in hardware and infrastructure I can run at home and use that seems to be no problem for my head to just roll with.
And just because you're mostly using local models doesn't mean you can't use API hosted models in specific contexts. Of course, then the same dread sets in, but if you can do 90% of the tokens with local models and 10% with pay-per-usage API hosted models, you get the best of both worlds.