Is local really free?

No subscription, but electricity, disk, and a machine that can run the model still cost money. Small models keep that honest.

Where do I see prices?

On each tool page in the index.

Browser chats: ChatGPT, Claude.ai, and Gemini free tiers for prompting practice.

Study and research: NotebookLM and Perplexity free tiers (limits change).

Local: Ollama and LM Studio have no subscription after you own the laptop. Power and disk are the real costs.

GitHub Copilot Student is available through GitHub Education for verified students.

Google, Microsoft, and others periodically run education promotions. They expire.

You hit free-tier rate limits during real work, and a paid plan is cheaper than missing deadlines.

You need a feature your free tier blocks, and a short side-by-side test already showed it helps.

Is local really free?
No subscription, but electricity, disk, and a machine that can run the model still cost money. Small models keep that honest.
Where do I see prices?
On each tool page in the index.