AI Token Counter
Estimate how many tokens your ChatGPT, Claude or AI prompt uses. Paste your text to calculate tokens, words, characters, reading time and approximate API cost.
Paste your prompt
Enter text, instructions, code or chat messages to estimate token usage.
Quick token examples
What is an AI token?
A token is a small piece of text that an AI model reads. It can be a word, part of a word, punctuation mark, space or piece of code depending on the model.
Why tokens matter
AI models have context limits. Your prompt, uploaded text, previous conversation and model response all use tokens.
Why this is an estimate
ChatGPT, Claude and other models use different tokenizers. This tool estimates token usage using practical text-based heuristics.
Common AI token counting mistakes
Assuming one word equals one token
Tokens are not the same as words. Short words may be one token, while longer words can be split into multiple tokens.
Forgetting the output also uses tokens
The AI response uses context too. A large prompt leaves less room for the model’s answer.
Ignoring code and formatting
Code, JSON, tables and Markdown often use more tokens than ordinary prose because punctuation and structure matter.
Treating estimates as billing data
Provider billing is based on the provider’s official tokenizer and pricing. This tool is for planning and estimation.
Free AI token counter for ChatGPT and Claude prompts
This AI token counter helps you estimate how large a prompt is before sending it to ChatGPT, Claude or another language model. It counts estimated tokens, words, characters and reading time, and can also estimate rough input cost if you enter a price per million tokens.
Token counting is useful when you are working with long prompts, system instructions, code snippets, articles, transcripts, documentation or multi-message chat history.
How token estimates work
Exact tokenization depends on the model. A token counter built without the official tokenizer cannot promise perfect accuracy, especially across different models. This tool uses a practical approximation based on character count, word count, punctuation density and whether the text looks code-heavy.
For everyday prompt planning, this is usually enough to understand whether your text is short, medium-sized or likely to be too large for a model context window.
When should you use a token counter?
Use a token counter when you are preparing long prompts, checking whether a document may fit into context, estimating API usage, comparing prompt versions or trying to shorten a prompt before sending it.
AI Token Counter FAQ
What is an AI token?
An AI token is a piece of text used by a language model. It can be a word, part of a word, punctuation mark or formatting element.
Is this token counter exact?
No. This tool gives an estimate. Exact counts depend on the model and tokenizer used by the AI provider.
Does it work for ChatGPT and Claude?
Yes, it gives useful estimates for ChatGPT, Claude and other AI prompts, but exact token counts may vary.
Why does code use many tokens?
Code contains punctuation, symbols, indentation and short fragments that can increase token usage.
Does the AI response count too?
Yes. Both your input and the model’s output use tokens and count toward total context usage.
Is my text uploaded?
No. This tool runs locally in your browser and does not upload or store your text.