Glossary · AI basics
noun/toh·kən/
A small chunk of text, often part of a word, that AI models read and write in. API usage and context windows are measured in tokens.
In practice
Tokens are the unit AI models work in, and they matter for two business reasons. API usage is billed by tokens, so they drive the running cost of custom tools. And context windows are measured in tokens, so they set how much text Claude can consider at once. As a rough guide, a token is a few characters, so a page of text is a few hundred tokens.
It varies with the language and the text, but in English a token is often around three-quarters of a word. Anthropic's documentation and token counting tools give exact figures for a specific piece of text.
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