Plain English · 1 min
Tokens: why AI is priced in confetti.
AI pricing pages talk about 'tokens' as if everyone was born knowing. Here's the whole idea in a minute.
Plain English · Updated 24 September 2026
The definition
The only two things you need to know
- Costs scale with use, gently. Hypothetically, a shop assistant answering 200 short customer questions a month consumes far fewer tokens — and pounds — than one summarising 50-page documents daily. This is why a build's running cost is mostly 'how much does it actually work for you' — and why your quote spells yours out rather than quoting you somebody else's.
- You'll almost never think about tokens directly. A properly built tool budgets them for you; a subscription tool prices them in. The word only matters when comparing vendors — 'unlimited' usually means 'until our fair-use clause', and per-token pricing is honest about what's being bought.
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