Privatemode vs. self-hosted AI
Self-hosting gives your team full data control, but demands hardware, MLOps, and months of setup.
Privatemode gives you the same control, live in minutes.
Data privacy
Same control. Different effort.
- Privatemode: hardware-enforced
- Self-hosted: your responsibility
Privatemode encrypts prompts, files, and responses end-to-end and processes them only inside confidential-computing environments no operator, including Privatemode, can access. Self-hosting gives you full data control too, but you're the one who has to build, configure, and maintain the isolation yourself.
Setup time
How long until the first real workload.
- Privatemode: minutes
- Self-hosted: weeks to months
Privatemode is live today as a web app, desktop app, and OpenAI-compatible API, with no procurement cycle in between. Self-hosted stacks, between hardware procurement, deployment, and hardening, typically take far longer to reach production than teams initially plan for.
Ops burden
Who keeps it running.
- Privatemode: none, fully managed
- Self-hosted: dedicated MLOps team
With Privatemode, model updates, scaling, and patching are handled for you. Your team uses the service, Privatemode operates the infrastructure behind it. Self-hosting means model updates, scaling, security hardening, and uptime all become your team's ongoing responsibility.
Costs
What you pay for, and when.
- Privatemode: usage-based
- Self-hosted: high upfront and recurring
With Privatemode, you pay for what your team actually uses. There's no upfront hardware bet and no capacity sized for peak load. Self-hosting means GPUs, racking, and redundancy are capital costs you carry regardless of how much the stack is actually used.
Privatemode vs. self-hosted AI, at a glance.
Same data control, different effort. Self-hosting means your team builds and runs the infrastructure yourself. Privatemode gives you the same hardware-enforced control, live in minutes, fully managed.
- Data privacy
- Setup time
- Ops burden
- Costs
Privatemode
The same hardware-enforced data control as self-hosting, delivered as a managed, verifiable service.
- Hardware-enforced
- Minutes
- None, fully managed
- Usage-based
Self-hosted AI
Full data control, on infrastructure your team owns, secures, and maintains.
- Your responsibility
- Weeks to months
- Dedicated MLOps team
- High upfront and recurring
Want to see Privatemode in action?
We're happy to show you around and give an overview of what's possible.
Privatemode vs. self-hosted AI
Frequently asked questions
Self-hosting solves privacy at the cost of infrastructure. Your team has to procure hardware, run MLOps, and maintain the stack indefinitely. Privatemode gives you the same hardware-enforced data control as a managed service, so you get the privacy without the operational burden.
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