Tokens on a Budget

Token problems: 16 of 20

Token problems: the workbook

1. Count the Tokens

2. Subword Splitting

3. Punctuation Counts

4. Tokens per Word

5. Will It Fit?

6. The Price of a Call

7. Two Kinds of Token

8. Input or Output?

9. The Two-Part Bill

10. End-to-End Call Cost

11. Comparing Three Calls

12. The Average Call

13. The System Prompt

14. The System Prompt Tax

15. Calls in a Budget

16. Tokens on a Budget

17. How Long Will It Take?

18. The Split Matters

19. Pricing per Million Tokens

20. Tokens from the Bill

Given a budget, how many tokens can one call afford? The earlier pricing problems ran forward: tokens in, cost out. This one runs backward: cost in, tokens out. Divide the budget by the price per block, then scale up to tokens. Agents with per-call cost limits use this calculation to set a maximum context size before each turn.

Problem

You have a budget of 50 cents for one call. The model is priced at 2 cents per 100 tokens. How many tokens can the call use?

How many 100-token blocks the budget buys

Convert the blocks to tokens

Practice 1

You have a budget of 90 cents for one call. The model is priced at 3 cents per 100 tokens. How many tokens can the call use?

How many 100-token blocks the budget buys

Convert the blocks to tokens

Practice 2

You have a budget of 60 cents for one call. The model is priced at 4 cents per 100 tokens. How many tokens can the call use?

How many 100-token blocks the budget buys

Convert the blocks to tokens

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Next:
17. How Long Will It Take?