Cost per million tokens
The standard unit for LLM API pricing. Quoted separately for input and output, in USD per 1,000,000 tokens.
What it is
Providers quote two numbers, e.g. "$3.00 / $15.00 per 1M" meaning $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens. Your monthly bill is (input tokens / 1M x input price) + (output tokens / 1M x output price).
Why it matters
A single "price" is misleading because the input/output split varies 5x. Two models with the same blended token price can cost very different amounts for your specific workload.
Cost & infrastructure impact
The cheapest sticker price is rarely the cheapest for you. Model it: the monthly API cost calculator applies your traffic to every model at once.