Where the numbers come from.

Every price on TokenScale is checked against the provider's official pricing page, nightly. This page explains what "verified" means here, how often the data updates, what happens when a provider changes a price, and what to do if we get one wrong.

The short version

• Verified nightly. All 22 providers are re-checked against their official pricing pages every night (US Pacific time), and the site is rebuilt with the result.
• Every provider links to its source. Each provider's info sheet shows the date it was last verified and a link to the official pricing page, so you can check any number yourself.
• History is append-only. Price changes are added to the record; the past is never rewritten. Corrections are made in the open, in the changelog.
• Every build is versioned. BUILD.txt states exactly which build you are looking at and when it was made.

What "verified" means

Verified means a human-readable price was read from the provider's official pricing page that night and matched against what TokenScale shows. It does not mean scraped from a third-party aggregator, and it does not mean estimated.

Sometimes a provider's page cannot be read on a given night (some pricing tables are loaded by scripts that block automated checks). When that happens the last verified price is carried forward and the verified date stays at the last night it was actually confirmed. When two official sources disagree (it happens more than you'd think), the conflict is noted rather than silently picking one.

How a price gets on the page

Words to tokens

TokenScale expresses sizes in content you recognise. The word counts behind the landmarks are real: The Hobbit is 95,356 words, verified against the Project Gutenberg text. Tokens are estimated from words at roughly 1.33 tokens per word, the ratio that holds for typical English prose. Different tokenizers vary a little either side of that; the price differences between providers are far larger than the tokenizer differences.

Promotions and intro pricing

Limited-time promotional rates are shown as an overlay on the live price, clearly labelled. They never enter the price history, so the historical record reflects standard published rates only.

When we get it wrong

Corrections are published, not buried. The first one set the tone: on launch week the headline figure said writing The Hobbit cost $0.04, which was the input cost only. The correct total was $0.06. The fix, and why it happened, went straight into the changelog. That distinction between input and output pricing is exactly what this site exists to make visible.

If a number here doesn't match the provider's page, we want to know within the day.

Spotted an error? Use the "Report a pricing error" link in the calculator's footer, or email will@biltonprojects.com. Confirmed same-model corrections are applied and logged; anything ambiguous is flagged on the site rather than guessed at.

Check it yourself

• BUILD.txt — the version and build time of the site you are reading right now.
• Changelog — every price change and correction, dated, with before-and-after tables.
• Price history — the nightly record across all providers.
• Each provider's info sheet on the calculator — last verified date and the official source link.

Last updated: 2 July 2026. If the process changes, this page changes with it.

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