Self-Hosted ML Trades Control for Heavy Ops

Self-hosting is a trade, not a shortcut. It makes sense when control is the requirement, but it turns your team into the model operator, SRE, and compliance layer all at once.

• –You get hard controls managed APIs rarely offer: data locality, network isolation, version pinning, and custom guardrails.
• –You also inherit the unglamorous work: GPU sizing, latency tuning, observability, patching, rollbacks, backups, and on-call.
• –The break-even usually shows up in regulated, privacy-sensitive, or ultra-low-latency workloads where vendor APIs become a bad fit.
• –The hidden tax is governance: once the model is yours, you have to prove it is safe, reproducible, and still performing after every change.