What is token accounting?

Definition

Artificial intelligence token accounting captures how many tokens a model receives and produces, often separating cached, reasoning and ordinary output categories. The records support context management, cost estimation, quotas and usage reports.

A proxy must normalize provider-specific usage fields without inventing precision. Tokenizers and billing categories can differ, so accounting should retain the provider's authoritative values and identify requests where complete usage data is unavailable.

Acronyms and aliases

AI token accounting acronymmodel token accounting synonymartificial intelligence token accounting variant

Frequently asked questions

Why track input and output tokens separately?

They can have different prices and resource costs, and separating them helps explain where a request's usage and bill originated.

Do all models count tokens the same way?

No. Tokenizers and usage categories vary, so counts from different models may not represent identical amounts of text or computation.

Videos explaining token accounting