OpenAI charges per token — understanding tokenization is essential for cost management.

What Is a Token?

• ~4 characters or ~0.75 words in English
• "ChatGPT is great" = 4 tokens
• 1,000 tokens ≈ 750 words ≈ 1.5 pages

Current Pricing (approx.)

• gpt-4o-mini: $0.15/1M input tokens, $0.60/1M output tokens
• gpt-4o: $2.50/1M input, $10/1M output
• text-embedding-3-small: $0.02/1M tokens

Cost Control Tips

• Count tokens before sending: use tiktoken library
• Set max_tokens to limit output length
• Use gpt-4o-mini for simpler tasks
• Cache repeated prompts

Reference:

OpenAI pricing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Tokens%20and%20Pricing