# Cost per Token **Entity class:** AI-economics metric **Domain:** Artificial intelligence / Inference economics **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition Cost per token measures the price of generating or processing a unit of model text and is commonly used to compare inference services. ## Mechanism and significance The metric is useful but incomplete because total value also depends on reasoning quality, context length, latency, tool use, success rate, and how many tokens a task requires. ## Relationships - **Research dossier:** [[research/ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots|ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots]] - **Ontology route:** [[ASI and RSI Timeline Ontology#Model Architecture and Compute Economics|Model Architecture and Compute Economics]] - **Primary fields:** [[Machine Intelligence]] · [[AI Infrastructure]] · [[Compute Race]] - **Adjacent concepts:** [[Hyperscale Resource Allocation]] · [[Cost per Attempt]] · [[Orchestration Economics]] · [[Physical Compute Repricing]] ## Sources and provenance - [[research/ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots|ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots]] — immediate source for this node's role in the broadcast research map. ## Evidence boundary The research dossier establishes why this entity or concept belongs in the Moonshots ontology. Time-sensitive organizational, product, policy, and performance claims should be checked against the linked primary source or a current authoritative source before reuse as settled fact.