Cost Comparison: Apple Silicon vs. OpenRouter for AI Inference

May 17, 2026

AI Summary

Apple's M5 MacBook Pro, while capable of running advanced AI models, incurs higher costs compared to OpenRouter. The hardware's expense and energy consumption lead to a significant difference in cost per million tokens generated, with OpenRouter offering a more economical solution for similar performance.

The M5 MacBook Pro costs approximately $4,299 and can run models like Gemma 4 31b.
Under load, the MacBook consumes about 50-100 watts, translating to electricity costs of approximately $0.02 per hour.
Cost per million tokens generated on the MacBook ranges from $1.61 to $4.79, depending on usage lifespan and performance.
In contrast, OpenRouter offers similar models at about 38-50 cents per million tokens, making it significantly cheaper.
The M5 Max achieves 10-40 tokens per second, while OpenRouter can reach 60-70 tokens per second, indicating faster performance for cloud solutions.
Overall, the cost of local inference on Apple silicon is estimated to be around three times higher than that of OpenRouter for comparable tasks.

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Cost Comparison: Apple Silicon vs. OpenRouter for AI Inference

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