OpenAI Tiktoken & LLM Token Counter
Count tokens for GPT-4o, GPT-4, Claude, and Gemini in real time. Inspect token boundaries with visual color highlights and estimate API costs.
Why Token Count Matters
LLM APIs charge per token, not per word or character, and every model enforces a maximum context window measured in tokens. A prompt that looks short in words can still consume far more tokens than expected — code, non-English text, and unusual punctuation typically tokenize less efficiently than plain English prose. Knowing your exact token count before sending a request helps you stay within context limits and estimate API costs accurately before you hit "send."
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Tiktoken?
Tiktoken is OpenAI's open-source byte-pair encoding (BPE) tokenizer, used by models like GPT-4o and GPT-4 to split text into tokens before processing.
Why do different models show different token counts for the same text?
Each model family — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek — uses its own tokenizer with a different vocabulary, so identical text can split into a different number of tokens depending on which model you select above.
Is my prompt text sent to any server to count tokens?
No. Tokenization runs entirely in your browser using the same encoding logic as the actual models — your text is never transmitted anywhere.
Is this tool affiliated with OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google?
No. This tool is an independent, open-source-based implementation for estimating token counts and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or DeepSeek. Model and pricing names are used solely to describe compatibility.
Estimate API Costs Before You Spend
Since most LLM providers bill per token rather than per character, small differences in prompt phrasing or formatting can noticeably change your cost at scale. Use the pricing tier selector above to estimate input costs for your prompt across major model providers before running it through a live API.