The easiest way to lie to yourself as an indie builder is to look at revenue without looking at usage cost. If you are building with LLMs, your margins can look healthy right up until a real user starts hammering the product. Then the invoice shows up and suddenly your nice little side project is subsidizing somebody else's curiosity. I built TokenBar because I got tired of flying blind. The real problem is not high cost. It is invisible cost. Most small AI products do not die because the model bill is inherently too high. They die because the founder does not see the bill forming in real time. That creates a few bad habits: You ship prompts without knowing what they cost You test with small inputs, but users show up with giant ones You think a feature is working because engagement is up, but gross margin is quietly collapsing You price based on vibes instead of actual usage By the time you notice the problem, you already trained users to expect a level of usage your pricing cannot support.…