The latest articles on DEV Community by ilan lachkar (@ilan_lachkar_5fb20af6233d). https://dev.to/ilan_lachkar_5fb20af6233d https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4036541%2F80fbde57-cd2b-4609-95f1-53e23f716656.png https://dev.to/ilan_lachkar_5fb20af6233d en ilan lachkar Sun, 19 Jul 2026 12:45:52 +0000 https://dev.to/ilan_lachkar_5fb20af6233d/i-built-a-cli-that-estimates-llm-api-cost-before-you-send-the-request-533h https://dev.to/ilan_lachkar_5fb20af6233d/i-built-a-cli-that-estimates-llm-api-cost-before-you-send-the-request-533h <p>I kept overrunning my Anthropic/OpenAI budget by guessing token counts<br> before sending big prompts. So I built <strong>llm-tokencheck</strong>, a free CLI<br> that estimates tokens + USD cost for a file or text across Anthropic,<br> OpenAI and Google models <em>before</em> you make the API call.<br> </p> <div class="highlight js-code-highlight"> <pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> ```bash npm install -g llm-tokencheck tokencheck myfile.txt ``` </code></pre> </div> <div class="highlight js-code-highlight"> <pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> It prints a cost table across models so you can pick the cheapest one that fits, or just sanity-check a big request before sending it. There's an optional $9 Pro license (`--activate`) that unlocks batch processing of a whole folder + CSV export — useful if you're auditing costs across a codebase or a dataset. - GitHub: https://github.com/ilan-lachkar/llm-tokencheck - npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/llm-tokencheck Feedback welcome, especially on pricing accuracy for newer models. </code></pre> </div> <div class="highlight js-code-highlight"> <pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> </code></pre> </div> showdev cli llm opensource