What models and quantizations have you been trying? I've had great success with the larger Qwen 3.x models at 6-bit levels. Using 6 bit quantization is really the bare minimum to give local models a fair shot at agentic flows. Once you start pushing below that the models become more "dumb" from the limited bit space.

The main benefits for local are:

1) control 2) privacy 3) transparent cost model

Cloud has tremendous value for speed, plug and play, and performance. You need to decide how those compete with the benefits of local - both today, and a year from now, e.g.