I Built a TOON Playground: Save 40% on LLM Tokens

Source: Dev.to

Stop Burning Money on AI Tokens

If you build with LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini), you know the pain: tokens = money.
Every extra bracket and quote in your JSON payloads costs you cash. I found a way to stop the bleeding.

JSON vs TOON

JSON (108 tokens)

{
  "hikes": [
    { "id": 1, "name": "Blue Lake", "dist": 7.5, "sunny": true },
    { "id": 2, "name": "Ridge", "dist": 9.2, "sunny": false }
  ]
}

TOON (65 tokens)

hikes[2]{id,name,dist,sunny}:
  1,Blue Lake,7.5,true
  2,Ridge,9.2,false

That’s a 40 % reduction. Scale that up to millions of requests, and you save a serious budget.

TOON Playground

I built a free, open‑source web app that proves the math in real time.

• Instant conversion – type JSON on the left, get TOON on the right.
• Live token counter – see exactly how much money you save per prompt.
• Zero latency – built with vanilla JS and Vite, no bloat.
• Modern UI – glassmorphism design with a sleek dark mode.
• Deployment – hosted on Netlify for global access.

Don’t guess your token usage—measure it.

▶️ Try the TOON Playground → toon.shahdeep.ca