Lessons · Lesson 5 of 6
What does an AI answer cost?
What it costs in electricity to produce a million tokens.
AI speaks in tokens
AI models read and write in tokens, small pieces of words. A short answer is a few hundred tokens.
A GPU can produce a certain number of tokens each second. The faster it is, the less electricity each token needs.
From electricity bill to cost per token
Divide the power cost per hour by the tokens produced per hour and you get the energy cost per token. Industry quotes it per million tokens.
Slide the electricity price and the speed to see how each one changes the cost.
Quick check
Your GPUs get twice as fast at the same power. The energy cost per token…
- Doubles
- Halves
- Stays the same
Show the answer
Halves. Same power, twice the tokens: each token takes half the energy.