HARDWARE
~$360
2x Pi5 8GB + peripherals
(Feb 2026 +$30 price increase)
MONTHLY
~$0
$0 local only
Cloud server pre-paid; optional T3
VS ALPHA
$40K+
Per child per year
($80K+ for both boys)
SERVICE COST BREAKDOWN
Ollama (qwen2.5:0.5b, 3b)$0Self-hosted, T0/T1 tiers llama.cpp (Llama 3.1 8B)$0Self-hosted, T2 tier Gemini 2.5 Pro (T3 cloud)~$1.25/$10 per 1M tokensInput/output, OFF by default Neo4j Community$0Self-hosted Docker PostgreSQL$0Self-hosted Docker Vosk ASR + Kokoro TTS$0Self-hosted on Pi satellites Cloudflare AI Gateway$0Cost tracking, logging, rate limiting (free plan) Year 1 total: ~$360 (hardware only — Pi satellites + peripherals). Cloud server is pre-paid and not a per-month cost for this project. Cloudflare AI Gateway provides cost tracking, request logging, and rate limiting at no cost (free plan). Cloud T3 is feature-flagged OFF by default. If enabled selectively, Gemini 2.5 Pro adds ~$1.25/1M input tokens, ~$10/1M output tokens. Raspberry Pi 5 prices increased Feb 2026 (+$30 for 8GB). Budget with margin and active cooling for sustained workloads.