AI by Hand ✍️

AI by Hand ✍️

Token Pricing

Cents per hundred tokens

Prof. Tom Yeh's avatar
Prof. Tom Yeh
May 28, 2026
∙ Paid

Library › Token Problems

  1. Tokenization

  2. Subword Tokens

  3. Non-Word Tokens

  4. Token Ratio

  5. Headroom

  6. Token Pricing

  7. Prompt and Completion

  8. The Billing Line

  9. Asymmetric Pricing

  10. Words to Cents

  11. Token Mix

  12. Usage Forecast

  13. Standing Instructions

  14. Fixed Overhead

  15. Budget Ceiling

  16. Token Allowance

  17. Two Speeds

  18. Output Bound

  19. Rate Cards

  20. Usage Audit

What does a model API call cost? Every call is billed by the token: count the 100-token blocks in the call, then multiply by the price per block. Real APIs quote per million tokens, but these problems use cents per 100 to keep the arithmetic easy to follow by hand. An agent that calls the model on every user turn pays this cost each time.

Paid members: the worksheet and its printable PDF are below ↓

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