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AI Glossary

What is Token?

The basic unit of text that AI models process — roughly equivalent to a word or word fragment. AI usage is typically measured and billed in tokens.

Token explained

Language models don't read text word by word — they process "tokens", which are chunks of text (typically 3-4 characters). A rough rule: 100 tokens ≈ 75 words ≈ ~1 paragraph. Every model has a "context window" limit — the maximum number of tokens it can process in one request. Understanding tokens helps you write more efficient prompts and stay within model limits when working with long documents.

Frequently asked questions

What is a token in AI?
A token is the basic unit of text that AI language models process. It's roughly equivalent to a word or word fragment. AI API usage is measured in tokens.
How many tokens is 1000 words?
Approximately 1300-1400 tokens for English text. Different languages tokenize differently.
What is a context window?
A context window is the maximum number of tokens an AI model can process in one request (both your input and its output combined). Claude 3.5 has a 200K token context; GPT-4o has 128K.
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