Word of the Day
Token
A token is the chunk of text an AI model reads and generates — roughly a word or word-piece; usage and limits are measured in tokens.
Get it freeLanguage models don't read characters or whole words directly — they read tokens, which are common word-pieces. A rough rule of thumb in English is about 4 characters or three-quarters of a word per token, so 100 tokens is roughly 75 words.
Tokens matter for two practical reasons: cost (API pricing is per token, input and output) and limits (the context window is measured in tokens). Long pasted documents and long answers both consume tokens, which is why concise prompts and outputs are cheaper and faster.
Related: context window · temperature · embeddings
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