Glossary

What is Token?

A token is a small piece of text, often a word or part of a word, that a language model breaks text into.

A language model does not read letters or whole sentences, but tokens: bite-sized pieces. The word 'office' can be one token, while a long word is made of several tokens. The model processes and charges per token. A rule of thumb: 1,000 tokens is about 750 English words.

What this means for you

Paid AI tools often charge per token. And a model has a maximum number of tokens it can handle at once, so very long texts sometimes will not fit.

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Last reviewed: 19 June 2026.

What is Token?

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