Mac4Claw vs DIY Mac Mini
Should you buy a $599 Mac Mini or rent one in the cloud? Let's do the math.
Total Cost of Ownership — First Year
Mac4Claw (Yearly Plan)
DIY Mac Mini
DIY is cheaper on paper — but doesn't include your time, downtime risk, or the frustration of maintaining infrastructure instead of building your agent.
Feature Comparison
The Verdict
DIY is cheaper if you value your time at $0. But most people running AI agents are builders, not sysadmins. Every hour spent configuring routers, replacing UPS batteries, or debugging DNS is an hour not spent on your agent.
Mac4Claw lets you skip straight to the fun part — deploying your agent and watching it work. No hardware to buy, no infrastructure to maintain, no power bills to worry about.
Buy a Mac Mini if you enjoy tinkering with hardware and have reliable power + internet.
Use Mac4Claw if you want to deploy and forget.
Frequently Asked Questions
A Mac Mini M4 costs $599 upfront. Add a UPS ($150), static IP ($10-20/mo from ISP), increased electricity ($15-30/mo), and your time for maintenance. Break-even is 6-8 months if nothing goes wrong. But you're also taking on all the risk: power outages, internet drops, hardware failures, and noise in your space.
Skip the setup. Start building.
No hardware to buy. No infrastructure to maintain. Just deploy your agent and go.