Quantization methodology

Open formula. Browser-based calculations. Source-dated rates. No API keys. No provider login. No tracing SDK. No account required. Input payloads are not stored.
Pricing source date: 2026-05-28 · Build verification: 2026-05-28 · Stale threshold: 30 days. This calculator is driven by quantization constants, VRAM footprint, and quality-risk assumptions, not provider API prices. The numbers reflect memory and precision trade-offs; validate against your own hardware and target model before acting.

Estimates how precision changes affect model weight memory, KV-cache pressure, speedup, and approximate quality tradeoff.

Formula

weights_gb = params_billions * bytes_per_parameter; total_vram = weights_gb + kv_cache_estimate(batch_size, kv_cache_tokens)

Primary source register

Quantization economics are hardware/kernel dependent. Use this as a planning estimate before running evals on the exact model and deployment stack.

Included assumptions

Excluded assumptions

Architecture-cost audit

Self-host break-evenGPU hourly cost, utilization, throughput, operational overhead, and API comparison.
Eval-suite budgetSamples, candidate models, repeated trials, and optional LLM-as-judge pass costs.

Diagnostic output

This tool returns Cost classification, Dominant cost driver, Decision threshold, and Sensitivity. Diagnostic focus: VRAM-fit threshold and quality-risk sensitivity..

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