Opportunities › LLM API access and pricing for independent developers › Proposed app
Tillgate
One key and a clear price per task for classification, OCR and sentiment calls
- Score
- 43
- confidence 51
- Evidence
- 6
- items on the page
- Rivals
- 2
- named in sources
- First version
- 35 d
- estimate
- Type
- Desktop app
- PWA: runs in the browser, installs on Mac and Windows
- Market since
- 2020
- Established market · AI estimate
ScreensConcept
Desktop app: Developers integrate API endpoints into applications, set budgets, and review usage logs during development—technical setup and integration work. Sample screens on a computer, in the proposed brand. Their numbers are sample data.
First call
Key active2 min
About this appAI proposal
Tillgate gives independent developers one API key for the language models they use for routine jobs: classification, sentiment detection and OCR. Sign up, get a key in minutes, and call a single endpoint. No cloud console, no choosing between product lines.
Before you send a job, Tillgate shows what it will cost per request and per thousand requests on each available model. Set a monthly cap and a per-key budget so a loop that runs wild stops instead of billing you.
It is built for one person or a small team. Task presets such as 'label this text' or 'read this scan' hide provider quirks, and the docs have one path per task, with copy-and-run examples.
- Tagline
- One key. A price you can read before you send.
- Voice
- PlainDirectCalm
- Why this name
- A till is where you see what you owe; a gate is the single way in. Two plain words joined: one entry, clear cost.
In the first version
Members say which features they would use. It tells PWAS what people want; it changes no score.
One key, several models
A single key and endpoint reach models from more than one provider, so switching a model is a one-line change.
No member yet
Cost shown before you send
Every call and batch has a price estimate per request and per 1,000, compared across the models that can do the task.
No member yet
Task presets
Ready endpoints for classification, sentiment and OCR with fixed output shapes, so you skip prompt and parsing work.
No member yet
Hard budget caps
Set monthly and per-key limits. Calls stop at the cap and you get an email before it is reached.
No member yet
Brand identityAI proposal
Check the name against trademark registers before using it.
Palette
#0F4C4ADeep Teal · primary#F6F3ECPaper · surface#1B2422Ink · text#E8A317Amber · accent#5E8C61Moss · data
Typography
Aa
Tillgate
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 0123456789
One key. A price you can read before you send.
PricingAI proposal
The material gives no competitor prices. OpenRouter's page shows a free plan and paid plans on request. These tiers are a starting point to test, not derived from any price.
Free
Free
- Small monthly test allowance
- All task presets
- One API key
- Cost preview
Solo
$9 a month
- Pay-as-you-go tokens plus a small markup
- Unlimited keys
- Budget caps and alerts
- CSV export
Team
$29 a month
- Up to 5 seats
- Shared budgets and logs
- Cheapest-fit routing
- Bring your own provider key
What it could be worthEstimate
What a software business making this much sells for today, from real deals. Pick a monthly revenue.
If it makes
Worth about
$194,000
Sale range $132,000 to $263,000
$120,000 a year in revenue
From 87 software businesses listed and sold on Empire Flippers in the last year, revenue vetted by the broker: they sell for about 19× their monthly revenue, most between 13× and 26×.
Measured on profit, the middle deal is 32× monthly net profit: about 2.7 years of profit.
An estimate, not an offer or financial advice. A real price depends on profit, growth, churn, how much of the work is the owner's, and the buyer.
How it would growAI proposal
How the product would reach new customers through its own use, and how the first ones would be found. A plan to test, not a result.
- Built-in loop
- No loop in the product. Reached through developer content, docs and communities. API calls run behind customers' apps and do not show Tillgate's name to their users.
- Do they become customers?
- Customers are individual developers who find it directly. To test: whether visitors to cost-comparison pages and guides sign up and move from free to paid.
- First customers
- Solo developers and teams of 2 to 5 who run classification, sentiment or OCR jobs at volume and are dropping or avoiding direct provider APIs on cost or setup.
- Where to reach them
- Hacker News: Show HN with an open cost comparison for common routine tasks, plus a write-up on why setup is painful.
- Developer subreddits: Offer free test credits in threads on cheap classification and OCR; answer setup questions.
- Task-specific guides: Publish how-to pages such as 'cheap OCR for invoices' with runnable code and live cost figures.
- First milestone
- Ten developers each running a real workload and five paying after a month, showing demand for cost preview and caps.
Why people already pay for this
- Public claimDifficult API key acquisition and conflicting documentation from Google's LLM services
- Public claimLack of clear separation between Vertex and AI Studio creates confusion for developers
- Public claimPrice increases make routine LLM tasks unaffordable for cost-conscious developers
- Public claimDevelopers perceive major providers as enterprise-focused rather than developer-friendly
- Public claimDevelopers use third-party brokers at scale as an alternative to official APIs
Tech stack
Every proposal builds on the same PWA base, installable from the browser on any phone or computer. Dashed boxes are what this app adds.
- AppNext.js and TypeScript
- PWAManifest and service worker
- UITailwind CSS
- Data and authSupabase Postgres
- PaymentsStripe
- EmailResend
- HostingVercel
- This app · Model gatewayProvider APIs behind a thin routing layerCalls must reach several model providers with one key, normalised output and per-call cost metering.
- This app · Usage meteringEvent log with Stripe metered billingToken-level usage must be recorded per key and billed accurately.
RisksAI inference
- CommercialBrokers such as OpenRouter already exist; Tillgate needs to prove that task presets and cost preview matter enough to switch.
- PlatformProvider terms, rate limits or price changes could remove margin or limit reselling access to their models.
- CommercialUsage-based markup yields thin margins; small developers may leave once volumes grow and go direct.
- TechnicalNormalising outputs and OCR across providers is hard, and a provider outage can break calls unless failover works.
- DataDevelopers send customer text and scans through the service, so retention and privacy terms need to be clear.
Everything marked AI proposal or AI inference was written by a model from the evidence on the opportunity page. The proposed name must be checked against trademark registers before it is used.