Token

A token is the basic unit of text that a language model processes, typically a word, subword, or character.

Token counts determine model input limits, output length, and cost. Token counts drive both cost and latency, so they are the usual unit for budgeting and capacity planning.

Closely related concepts include Inference Cost, LLM Gateway, Mixture of Experts (MoE), Token Economics. Each is defined in the Prefactor glossary.