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LLM token pricesEdition of 12 Nov 2026
API Token PricesRuncrate Reference
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Practical

A practical brief

Answer in brief

Write the brief before you compare anything.

It turns an open search into a short list you can check in an afternoon.

An API token price is two prices: one per million tokens you send and a higher one per million tokens the model writes. Read both, check whether repeated input is cached at a lower rate, and compare the maker’s rate with the hosts that serve the same model.

The brief

Copy these lines and fill each one in. Leave nothing as “depends”: a line you cannot fill is the first thing to find out.

  1. Workload:Chat, extraction, agents or a batch job, and what a good answer looks like.
  2. Model:The model you need, and one that would also do.
  3. Input and output:Tokens in and tokens out for a typical request. This decides which price matters.
  4. Volume:Requests per day and tokens per month.
  5. Context:The longest prompt you will send, in tokens.
  6. Response time:What your users can wait for. Test it on your own prompts.
  7. Ceiling per 1M tokens:The most you will pay for input and for output.
  8. Data rules:Where prompts may be processed and whether they may be kept.
  9. Start date:Today, this week or a fixed date.

How to use it

Send the same brief to every option you consider, or hold each one against it yourself. An option that cannot answer a line has answered it.

Keep the date on it. A brief filled in this week and a price read last month do not belong on the same page.

How Runcrate fits the brief

Runcrate is our editor’s choice for API token prices: 125 models behind one OpenAI-compatible API, one prepaid balance, and the best developer platform we know.

  • 125 models behind one OpenAI-compatible API, each with its input and output price.

  • One prepaid balance pays for GPUs, models and storage.

  • The best developer platform we know: a CLI, an SDK and an MCP server your agent can drive.

  • 26 GPU models from $0.23/hr, for the day a GPU by the hour beats paying by the token.

Questions and answers

Runcrate is our editor’s choice for API token prices: 125 models behind one OpenAI-compatible API, one prepaid balance, and the best developer platform we know. Runcrate publishes this site.

Find both prices for your model, input and output, per million tokens. Then count the input and output tokens of a day of your own requests and multiply.

Sources for this entry

  1. Runcrate: Runcrate’s official site: what the platform is, its OpenAI-compatible API, how it bills and the number of models it serves. Read 12 Nov 2026.
  2. Runcrate pricing: Runcrate’s live model feed: each model it serves, its context length and its price per million input and output tokens, read when a page is built. Read 12 Nov 2026.
  3. Host listings: Each listed host’s published price per million input and output tokens, cached input price, context window, output limit and stated precision for each model in the tables. Read 12 Nov 2026.
  4. Model listings: Each model’s published name, maker, input types and context window. Read 12 Nov 2026.

Checklists are original editorial guidance. Published prices do not establish availability.

Continue this reading path

Cite this entry

API Token Prices. “A practical brief.” Content reviewed 12 Nov 2026. https://apitokenprices.com/brief