Tokens
The bite-sized chunks of text that AI models read and generate, like words or word fragments. They're how AI counts and processes language.
What are Tokens?
Tokens are the small pieces of text that AI models break language into before processing it.
Think of them like LEGO blocks. A sentence gets split into tokens (which can be whole words, parts of words, or even punctuation), the AI processes those blocks, then reassembles them into a response. "I love AI" becomes three tokens: "I", "love", "AI".
Every AI request you make burns tokens. Most models charge per token (input + output), so knowing your token count matters for budgeting. A rough rule: 1 token equals about 4 characters or ¾ of a word in English. That 500-word blog post? Around 667 tokens.
Use OpenAI's Tokenizer to check counts before you send requests. Different languages tokenize differently (Spanish uses more tokens per word than English), which affects your API costs.
Good to Know
How Vibe Coders Use Tokens
Frequently Asked Questions
Your Idea to AI Business In Days
Join Dan, Zehra and 0 others building AI businesses in days with video tutorials and 1 on 1 support.
Related Terms
Anthropic's mid-tier AI model released September 2025, optimized for coding and agentic tasks with a 200k token context window.
How AI systems store and recall information from previous conversations or interactions to provide contextual responses.
The practice of crafting specific instructions to get better outputs from AI models like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini.
The AI research company behind ChatGPT, GPT-4, DALL-E, and the APIs that power thousands of AI products.
Meta's open-source family of large language models you can download, customize, and run without API costs or vendor lock-in.
Join 0 others building with AI