On-premise AI pays off for companies of every size, from small teams of about 5 users to enterprises with hundreds. What matters is less the headcount than the usage intensity and the requirements for data protection and compliance.
Small companies (5 to 20 employees)
For small teams, on-premise makes sense above all when data protection is decisive: law firms, fiduciaries, medical practices, and other regulated businesses work with data that does not belong in the cloud. Entry works with the Server S1, or with the S2 for intensive usage (details on the server page). The cloud remains the better fit for very small teams below 5 users, for pilot projects, or for irregular, non-critical workloads.
Mid-sized companies (20 to 100 employees)
For mid-sized companies, cost savings often become a factor alongside compliance. A software company whose developers work with coding assistants and agents consumes so many tokens that own servers are clearly cheaper than cloud bills. A law firm with 25 lawyers needs the confidentiality anyway. Typical is the Server S2, if needed several servers, managed centrally via the onprem.ai software.
Large companies (over 100 employees)
Large organizations with several sites, strict requirements (such as FINMA), and high token consumption amortize their own infrastructure fastest. For rack installations, Dell D1 (one GPU, 96 GB VRAM) and D2 (two GPUs, 192 GB VRAM) are alternatives to S1 and S2, not larger successors. For larger installations, we work with you to plan additional servers or custom clusters, including site and availability requirements.
How to decide
Three questions settle it: How intensively is AI used (the more, the faster your own hardware pays off)? How strict are your data protection requirements (in regulated industries, on-premise is often the only legally safe option)? And how important are predictable costs (on-premise means fixed costs instead of usage-based cloud bills)?
The cost calculator estimates demand from your team size on an S2 basis and compares on-premise with cloud GPUs over three years, including break-even and the residual value of the hardware. Dell capacity is not calculated. Published prices for Dell D1 and D2 are on the pricing page. All prices and cost estimates are non-binding, excluding VAT.
Next steps
- Open the cost calculator and estimate break-even on an S2 basis
- Contact us for individual advice
Sources and further information:
- On-premise AI for SMEs (practical guide for different company sizes)
- LLM hardware cost calculator (break-even calculation)