Token Economics: Understanding AI Pricing in 2026
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confused by tokens, context windows, and pricing? wrote the guide i wish i had when starting out
lmk if anyone wants more details
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one thing the pricing guides always skip - cached tokens are way cheaper on most platforms now. if you're sending the same system prompt repeatedly you can save like 50-90% depending on the provider. actually matters at scale.
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context window pricing is the part people underestimate. it's not just input vs output costs, it's that some models charge for the full context on every single call. 200k context sounds amazing until your bill shows up.
interesting perspective. start with chatgpt and branch out from there. thats what worked for me
ok so I actually tested this pretty extensively last week and heres what I found - youtube tutorials are great but actually building stuff is how you learn. for those cases I had to modify the technique a bit. happy to share details if anyones interested