TokenScale exists because "$5 per million tokens" never made intuitive sense. The Hobbit costs $0.06 on Gemini Flash-Lite — that lands. The tool was built to make that translation happen across 16 AI providers, for free, with no sign-up. What follows is the story of how it got built, told in the only language the project understands: numbers.
~46
TokenScale sessions
Traced from conversation history across this Claude account
316
Days of context
From first token pricing curiosity to launch-ready MVP
16k+
Lines of code
One HTML file. No build tools. No framework.
16
AI providers
In the comparison table at launch
6
Nights of data
Entered by hand. At 8pm. On a phone.
0
Dev environment
No terminal. No npm. No git repository.
$0
Infrastructure cost
Cloudflare free tier. Drag-and-drop deploy.
Anthropic doesn't expose per-conversation token counts in the standard interface, so these figures are honest estimates — derived from session count, average message density, and the fact that file-heavy sessions (uploading the 16,000-line HTML file repeatedly) run 60,000–100,000 tokens each. They are likely conservative.
Estimated user prompts sent
~800–1,200
Estimated input tokens
~12–20 million
Estimated output tokens
~8–15 million
Equivalent pay-per-use API cost
~$150–$300
Methodology: ~46 TokenScale-specific sessions out of ~200+ total account sessions. Average 18–25 exchanges each. File-heavy sessions dominate token count due to repeated 16,000-line HTML uploads. Equivalent cost calculated at Claude Sonnet rates ($3/$15 per MTok input/output). All of this was covered by a $20/month Pro subscription.
"Every session was on mobile. Most were voice-initiated. The nightly price data is entered manually at 8pm. There's no local dev environment, no git, no build step. The whole product is one HTML file."
— Will Bilton, Bilton Projects
"Maybe you should give people clear advice about which AI would be best for them… take the stress out for them. Just a thought."
— Dad · First user · May 17 2026 · Described the next major feature in one paragraph
100%
Mobile built
Every prompt, every upload, every iteration — on a phone.
1
File to ship
Drag to Cloudflare. Live in under five minutes.
1 URL
Shareable views
Provider, model, and landmark encoded in the link. Copy and share any configuration instantly.
609
Visitors on day one
No paid promotion. No existing audience. Just the tool.
8pm
The ritual
Nightly price entry. By hand. Before the automation arrives.
$20
Monthly cost
The entire infrastructure bill. Claude Pro subscription.
0
Co-founders
Solo. One person. All decisions. All sessions.
The account opened in July 2025 with a QR code generator and a slot machine game. TokenScale shipped in May 2026. Here is what happened in between.
July 2025
First session ever
QR code generator. Slot machine. Fish identification quiz. All on mobile. The account opens. No plan, just curiosity.
October 2025
The question that becomes TokenScale
A session titled "Pricing model details" — why does Haiku cost less than Opus? What are tokens, really? The seed is planted.
October–November 2025
Voice-coding on the move
Conversations happen while driving. Literally. Ideas captured in motion. Building in fragments, between moments, becomes the pattern.
December 2025
Bilton Projects takes shape
The business identity crystallises. Solo freelance setup. The brand that TokenScale will launch under appears for the first time.
April 22 2026
The interactive handbook
A full "Token Economics Handbook" is built — scrolling, editorial, animated. The same educational mission as TokenScale but static. The intellectual ancestor. The moment the idea becomes serious.
Late April 2026
The tool form emerges
Token Auditor → Claude Explorer → Gemini Explorer. The content landmark framing — "what does The Hobbit cost?" — appears for the first time. This is the core insight.
May 1 2026
The merge — 16 providers
Claude and Gemini versions merge. Then expand rapidly across 14 more providers. The comparison table that makes the tool worth sharing is born.
May 13–16 2026
The animation sprint
Slot machine. Candle-master colour reveal. Market banner tinting. Conversation cost visualiser. Price history changelog. Provider-aware theming. The tool becomes the product.
May 17 2026 — First real user
Dad's review
"Maybe you should give people clear advice about which AI would be best for them… take the stress out for them." — TokenScale was shared with three people. Dad reviewed it first. In one paragraph, he described the next major feature: the Help Me Choose wizard. TokenScale already had it. He just named why it matters.
May 20 2026 — Launch Day
MVP 2.0 — Ships · Google I/O fires a starting gun
16,000 lines. 16 providers. 6 nights of manually entered price history. Shareable URLs. The slot machine animation. The learn index. The parchment price history. One HTML file. Live. And on the same day — Google I/O 2026 launches Gemini 3.5 Flash at $1.50/$9 per million tokens. Five times the old Flash price. The tool that tracks AI pricing had a major pricing change happen on launch day. That's the whole point.
The nightly price data ritual — one entry per provider, by hand, on a phone, at 8pm — is not a limitation waiting to be automated. It is the discipline that makes the tool trustworthy. The automation will come. The habit will stay.
TokenScale was built to answer a simple question: what does AI actually cost, in words you recognise? The answer, it turns out, is also the story of how it was built.