How to work out tokens per dollar

Every listing gives a price in dollars per million tokens. That is dollars per token, scaled up so the figure is readable. Tokens per dollar is the same fact the other way up.

Take one million. Divide it by the price. The answer is how many tokens one dollar buys at that rate. A price below one dollar per million gives more than a million tokens per dollar. A price above it gives fewer.

A model has an input price and an output price, so it has two tokens-per-dollar figures. One says how much text a dollar lets the model read. The other says how much a dollar lets it write.

On 12 Nov 2026, the lowest listed input price for GLM 5.3 Flash was $0.04 per million tokens. The lowest listed output price was $0.0784 per million tokens. Divide one million by each and you have the two figures for that model on that day.

Tokens per dollar is easier to feel than a price. It turns a rate with several decimal places into a quantity. It is the natural unit for a budget: this many dollars, so this many tokens.

It also compares in the direction people expect. A higher figure is better. With prices, lower is better, and small differences hide in the decimals.

The figure says nothing about which model the tokens come from, or what the tokens achieve. A dollar buys many more tokens on a small model than on a large one, and the large one may finish the task in fewer.

It also inherits everything behind the price. A listing with reduced precision or a short context window can give more tokens per dollar because it is a lesser service.

Runcrate prices every model per million input tokens and per million output tokens and charges one prepaid balance. Runcrate lists GLM 5.3 Flash at $0.158 per million input tokens and $0.525 per million output tokens. Divide one million by either to get its tokens per dollar.

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