How we make money

Last reviewed October 20, 2026.

RunLocalAI is run by one person, Eruo Fredoline. The site earns money from affiliate and referral links. When you buy or rent through one of them, the seller pays us a commission or account credits. Your price is the same either way.

The programmes we are in

As of October 20, 2026, these and no others:

  • Amazon Associates (tag fredoline-20). GPUs, mini PCs, laptops and other hardware. Some products, such as the entry-level mini PCs on the mini PC guide, are in Amazon brand campaigns that pay us a higher commission than usual. That does not change how we describe them.
  • Velocity Micro, through the Awin affiliate network. Velocity Micro sells configure-to-order desktops and workstations. We show it as a “Prefer it assembled?” alternative next to builds and high-end GPUs. We have not tested a Velocity Micro system.
  • Vast.ai and RunPod referral programmes. GPU rental by the hour, shown where a model does not fit the hardware you have or where renting first is a cheap way to test a card before buying it. Vast.ai pays referrers a share of what referred accounts spend; RunPod pays referral credits on referred accounts’ spend for a limited period.
  • ClaudeStore referral, on /cost-vs-cloud only. ClaudeStore is an unofficial third-party reseller of Claude API credits. It is not Anthropic. Requests sent through a reseller pass through its servers. The same section links Anthropic’s own API with no referral.

Links to other retailers and vendor stores (for example Newegg, B&H, Apple or Framework) are ordinary links. We are not in an affiliate programme with them, so those clicks earn nothing.

How the links work

Amazon, Velocity Micro, Vast.ai and RunPod links go through a short redirect on our own domain, so when you hover one you see a runlocalai.co address, not the retailer’s. (The one ClaudeStore link on /cost-vs-cloud goes straight to ClaudeStore.)

  • runlocalai.co/out/az redirects to amazon.com and adds our Amazon tag on our server.
  • runlocalai.co/out/vm redirects to Awin’s tracking link, which then opens a page on velocitymicro.com: on a GPU page, the Velocity Micro system that offers that card (or the nearest one it does offer); elsewhere, its AI workstation page.
  • runlocalai.co/out/rent redirects to Vast.ai or RunPod with our referral code.

We do it this way for three reasons:

  • The Amazon tag is added on our server, so browser extensions that strip affiliate tags do not break the link.
  • Crawlers, AI fetchers and scripts are answered without being sent on to the retailer, so the click counts the programmes see stay close to real people.
  • We can count which pages send clicks from our own server log, without tracking you across sites.

Each redirect goes only to the one retailer named on the button; the destination is fixed in our code. If you open one of these links from outside our pages (pasted into the address bar, or from another site), it shows a short “Continue to …” page instead of redirecting. One extra click, and the page says where the link goes.

The Amazon tag is fredoline-20. After the redirect you can see it in the amazon.com address. If you ever see a different tag, it’s a bug; please tell us.

The disclosure pattern

Every block with affiliate or referral links carries a visible disclosure next to the links, and the site footer repeats it on every page. Affiliate links are marked rel="sponsored nofollow" for search engines. Next to a buy button we show a price only when it was checked recently, or the launch price with its year, or no price at all. The decision tools (such as the GPU chooser and the stack builder) work with planning estimates, which they label as estimates rather than live prices. Either way, check the listing before you buy.

What does NOT influence content

  • We have never accepted payment in exchange for a positive review.
  • We have never been paid to feature, hide, or downrank a model, tool, or hardware product.
  • Commission rates do not decide which products we recommend. A prebuilt or a rental is shown as an alternative to the page’s own pick, never in its place.
  • No partner sees our content before publication.

What we test and what we don’t

Benchmarks labelled as ours were run by the site owner on hardware he had access to, with the command and logs published. Most hardware verdicts are editorial assessments from specifications and published reports; those pages say “Not tested by us”. See how we verify.

Display advertising

The site has a Google AdSense integration, gated behind cookie consent. At present no ads are served; it is documented here, and in our privacy policy, in case it is enabled later. If ads do run, they are labelled and never appear on benchmark tables, code blocks, or comparison data.

How we choose what to recommend

  1. We identify the buyer decision a page is supposed to answer (e.g. “best GPU for Qwen at the 32B-class tier”).
  2. We pick the cards that answer that question, based on VRAM, memory bandwidth, software support, and power and noise.
  3. We rank those picks for the reader’s budget, not by whether an affiliate programme exists. A card we earn nothing on can still be the pick.
  4. We attach links where they exist. Used cards link to a search, because a single listing is the wrong destination for “buy it used”.

What we don’t do

  • No paid placements. We have never accepted payment for inclusion in a buyer guide, comparison, or “top picks” list.
  • No fake urgency. No countdown timers, no “limited time” framing.
  • No fake ratings. We do not publish review counts or star ratings we don’t have.
  • No popups or floating CTAs. Affiliate blocks sit in the page flow. The only in-between page is the short “Continue” step described above.
  • No advertiser tracking pixels beyond the consent-gated AdSense scripts disclosed in the privacy policy. We do not run Google Analytics. The configured traffic analytics are Plausible and self-hosted Umami; choosing Essential only disables them.

Reader-supported alternative

If you’d rather support the site without affiliate clicks, the most useful thing you can do is contribute a benchmark: see our contact page to send numbers from your own setup.