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AI model token counts vary by 20% for identical requests

By PulseAugur Editorial · [1 sources] ·

A developer observed a significant discrepancy in token counts for identical API requests routed to different AI models. One request, processed by a mid-tier model, resulted in 246,525 input tokens, while a nearly identical request (0.3% larger in byte size) sent to a smaller model was billed for only 196,892 tokens, a 20.1% reduction. This suggests that token counts are model-scoped, not solely a property of the input bytes, implying that direct cost comparisons based on "dollars per token" across different models can be misleading. AI

IMPACT Highlights that direct cost comparisons between AI models can be misleading due to model-specific tokenization.

RANK_REASON Developer's observation and analysis of AI model behavior, not a formal release or research paper.

Read on dev.to — LLM tag →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 1 sources. How we write summaries →

AI model token counts vary by 20% for identical requests

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Developer's observation and analysis of AI model behavior, not a formal release or research paper.
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Only one publisher covered this so far. Single-source stories can still rank when the publisher is high-authority, but they lack cross-source corroboration.
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57 days old
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  1. dev.to — LLM tag TIER_1 English(EN) · John ·

    Same Bytes, 20% Fewer Tokens: Token Counts Are Model-Scoped

    <p><em>Originally published on <a href="https://hexisteme.github.io/notes/same-bytes-20-percent-fewer-tokens.html" rel="noopener noreferrer">hexisteme notes</a>.</em></p> <p>I was running a local capture proxy in front of the vendor's API — a small man-in-the-middle process I'd s…

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