Back to the wheel

Understand AI token usage and cost.

AI models process text in tokens, which are pieces of words. About 100 English words is roughly 133 tokens, though the exact amount varies by model and tokenizer. You pay for input sent to the model and output it writes back; repeated conversation context can be billed again. That is metered API usage, not a flat consumer subscription.

Compare AI API pricing · See the cheapest LLM APIs · Read the verification method

Step 1 of 3

Pick something you'd write

AI companies charge by the word, more or less.
Let's see what real writing actually costs.

💬
A text message
~50 words
✉️
An email
~200 words
📰
A news article
~500 words
📖
The Hobbit
95,356 words
Technically they charge by the token, a chunk of a word, about three quarters of one. 100 words is roughly 133 tokens. That's the only jargon you need today.

Standard list estimate

$0.003
Standard on-demand list-price estimate for one run. Active promotions are shown in Basic and the full calculator.
less than a single sheet of paper
The standard wholesale API list-price estimate for this one job. Current promotions are available in Basic and the full calculator.
✓ Still an email ✉️, just resized
200 words
This slider only resizes the thing you picked. It never switches you onto something else.
reading $0.0003 writing $0.003
Reading (input) is cheap; writing back (output) costs several times more per token. That's the most misunderstood thing about AI pricing.
SmallClaude Haiku 4.5 · $0.003
MidClaude Sonnet 5 · $0.006
FlagshipClaude Fable 5.1 · $0.03
Every company sells three sizes: a small fast model, a balanced middle one, and a flagship. Same job, very different bill. Tap the tabs above.

Same job, other companies

OpenAI$0.0007
DeepSeek$0.0007
Google Gemini$0.001
Anthropic$0.003
Prices for the identical task vary 10 to 50 times between companies, and they change constantly. TokenScale checks all 22 nightly and marks any carried observation; these four are just the famous ones.

Scale it up

100people
×
5a day each
100 people × 5 a day = 500 jobs a day$30.44 / monthabout $1.38 a working day · 22 working days · Anthropic Claude Haiku 4.5
One job's price × people × how often: the number a business actually cares about. Watch it change when you switch tiers above.
Open the full tool: all 22 providers, current promotions and price history

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