Quick post about a change I made that’s worked out well.
I was using OpenAI API for automations in n8n — email summaries, content drafts, that kind of thing. Was spending ~$40/month.
Switched everything to Ollama running locally. The migration was pretty straightforward since n8n just hits an HTTP endpoint. Changed the URL from api.openai.com to localhost:11434 and updated the request format.
For most tasks (summarization, classification, drafting) the local models are good enough. Complex reasoning is worse but I don’t need that for automation workflows.
Hardware: i7 with 16GB RAM, running Llama 3 8B. Plenty fast for async tasks.
The models that the commercial AIs use are not at all usable on consumer grade hardware. The RTX pro 6000 has 96 gigs of vram, your GPU probably had 8.
I’ve played with the models that run on 16 gigs and it’s alright. But I wouldn’t even try fully vibe coding. Need some help with something small? Sure. But I wouldn’t have it try to make a finished product.