Unverified50% confidenceFactExact time
Output token pricing is higher than input token pricing because the computational load during the generation phase is far greater than during the prefill phase.
1
Sources
50%
Confidence
Long-term
Relevance
10/11/2026
First Seen
Sources
Related Claims
UnverifiedOutput tokens are typically more expensive than input tokens because outputs require autoregressive token-by-token generation, which has higher computational intensity and lower GPU utilization.77% similarVerifiedAPI call fees are priced separately for input tokens and output tokens, and the unit price of output tokens is typically higher than that of input tokens, because the output stage requires autoregressive inference.76% similarVerifiedThe price of output tokens for large language models is typically 4–8 times that of input tokens, because output involves autoregressive generation requiring multiple forward passes, resulting in higher marginal costs.75% similarUnverifiedOutput token pricing is typically 2–4 times that of input tokens, because the generation process requires step-by-step decoding and computation of attention weights.72% similarUnverifiedReasoning models may consume several times or even more than ten times the output tokens, directly driving up API call costs.70% similar
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