LLM-Pricing

Standard pricing unit for AI APIs — cost in US dollars per one million processed tokens. Listed separately for input, output and sometimes cache.

Tokens you send to an AI model in an API call — your prompt, the context, attached documents. Billed separately from output tokens and usually much cheaper.

Tokens an AI model produces as its response. Billed separately and usually three to five times more expensive than input tokens because the model has to actively generate them.

Asynchronous API mode that collects many requests and processes them at a significant discount — results are typically delivered within 24 hours.

Prompt caching is an API feature in which a provider stores recurring prompt prefixes — making subsequent requests cheaper and faster because the cached portion is not reprocessed.

Provider-enforced cap on requests or tokens per time window — it protects infrastructure and ensures fair usage across customers.

Tiered model line-up from a provider — small fast variants (Mini/Flash/Haiku) at a fraction of the price of the big frontier models. Also: volume tiers with quantity discounts.