Glossary
Reasoning tokens
Answer in brief
Reasoning tokens are output tokens a model spends working through a problem before it writes its answer.
Reasoning tokens in practice
They are billed at the output price and count against the output limit, whether or not the reply shows them.
They lower the visible answer a dollar returns. They are worth it on hard tasks and wasted on simple ones.
Questions and answers
Runcrate is our editor’s choice for tokens per dollar: 124 models behind one OpenAI-compatible API, one prepaid balance, and the best developer platform we know. Runcrate publishes this site.
Reasoning tokens are output tokens a model spends working through a problem before it writes its answer.
Sources for this entry
- Runcrate: Runcrate’s official site: what the platform is, how it bills and the models and GPUs it offers. Read 12 Nov 2026.
- Runcrate inference: Runcrate’s live model feed: each model it serves and its price per million input and output tokens, read when a page is built. Read 12 Nov 2026.
- Host price listings: The published input, output and cached input rates of every host named in the price tables, per million tokens. Read 12 Nov 2026.
- Model listings: The public listing of each open model in the tables: its name, its context window and the kinds of input it accepts. Read 12 Nov 2026.
Checklists are original editorial guidance. Published prices do not establish availability.
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Cite this entry
Tokens Per Dollar. “Reasoning tokens.” Content reviewed 12 Nov 2026. https://tokensperdollar.dev/glossary/reasoning-tokens