Comment by djoldman
Comment by djoldman 2 days ago
I've heard Gurobi is fairly expensive. Anyone willing to share pricing details?
Comment by djoldman 2 days ago
I've heard Gurobi is fairly expensive. Anyone willing to share pricing details?
How do those stack up against lp_solve (https://lpsolve.sourceforge.net/5.5/index.htm)?
Check out the Mittelmann benchmarks: https://plato.asu.edu/bench.html
I've used both. They are waaaaaaaaaay faster, waaaay more reliable, and actually have support. You're not going to want to run your product that is responsible for millions off of something without really solid support.
You can get a temporary free license for Gurobi. You are limited to a 1000 node problem size, but you can learn how to use the tool and set up your problem.
If you have a problem that needs Gurobi, it’s worth paying for it. Talk with their sales team. They are happy to help you get started. They know once you know how to use it, and how it can solve problems you will be inclined to use it in the future.
> If you have a problem that needs Gurobi, it’s worth paying for it.
Thit statement is baed on the assumption that it is a "big money" problem. On the other hand, I know lots of problems interesting to nerds for which Gurobi would help (but nerds don't have the money).
Their price list wasn't that confidential last I spoke with the sales team. It depends on the license type. Last I heard, it's around $15k/year for a standard subscription license. You can probably trial it for free, or be a student and have longer free access.
What I've heard - and obviously I can't confirm this - is that their only pricing tier is "call us" - at which point they try to figure out how much money you're making and ask for a slice of it.
I don't know why people think it's such a deeply shrouded secret - it's ~10k a seat for a core-limited license.
Heh, given all of the whispering, I was imagining something 10x the price. I am a nobody and have at least one license to a different product that is some $13k annual.
It’s much cheaper than making suboptimal decisions slowly. Free solvers are fine for small problems (GLPK, for example), but lots of business problems are pretty much impossible to solve in the timeframe required unless you fork over cash for a premium solver (Gurobi being the best).
The best MIP solvers (CPLEX, GUROBI, FICO) are all extremely expensive unless you're an academic. The free ones are fine for smaller problems. Some like Mosek are quite affordable and a good middle ground. To most organizations, the cost is reasonable for what they're getting.
Estimate something in the ballpark of 10.000-15.000 USD per seat for a core-limited license (see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44277010), and quite much more money for a network license.
Data point: https://www.solver.com/gurobi-solver-engine-lpmip-software A plugin for some software that contains a Gurobi license specific to this product costs 10.500 USD.
> If you are building a product that needs MILP it's worth it.
Rather: if you are building a product that will for sure make a lot of money, and needs MILP, it's worth it.
A lot of product concepts that nerds create are very innovate, but are often some private side projects.
> The on demand pricing is pretty reasonable.
Test case for your claim: someone privately intensively develops some open-source product that uses Gurobi as optimization backend. I guess on-demand will become very expensive.
I can't share pricing details since they are confidential but if you just want to play with MIP you don't need to buy one of the big three (XPRESS, Gurobi, CPLEX) which are all very expensive but usually available for free for students. There are at least two good open source / free for non-commercial use MIP solvers available:
https://highs.dev/ https://www.scipopt.org/