LLM token cost guides

Short, practical explainers — then crunch the numbers in the LLM Token Cost Calculator.

LLM bills are made of tokens: the small chunks of text a model reads (input) and writes (output), priced per million with very different rates for each. Getting a budget right means knowing three things — how many tokens your workload really uses, what those tokens cost across providers, and at what volume renting your own GPU server becomes the cheaper option. These guides cover exactly that, with worked examples you can reproduce.

Typical monthly bills at a glance

Blended prices at a 4:1 input:output ratio, list prices of July 2026, excluding batch and caching discounts. The spread is the whole story: model choice moves an LLM bill by two orders of magnitude before self-hosting even enters the picture.

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