Build a Google Colab tool to calculate LLM token usage and actual costs

A developer tutorial explains how to build a token and cost calculator for large language models using Google Colab and Python. The tool uses the tiktoken library to accurately count tokens as production APIs do, rather than estimating based on word counts. It demonstrates that technical jargon and code require significantly more tokens than plain English text, affecting costs. The calculator converts token counts into daily and yearly dollar figures based on actual model pricing sheets, helping developers forecast expenses before deployment.