A token is roughly a few characters of text or a fixed piece of an image. Models process input and produce output token by token, and providers bill per thousand tokens. Estimating tokens per request is how you forecast the monthly cost of an AI feature.
The book · Volume 7 of 7
AI for Video: A Complete Guide to Intelligence in Video Products: From Real-Time Pipelines and Agents to Serving, Cost, Compliance, and Verticals
Every token a model reads or writes shows up on the invoice, and video frames and long transcripts burn far more of them than teams expect. Volume 7 covers token economics in detail: cost per stream-hour, token budgets for video and speech inputs, serving choices that cut spend and when self-hosting beats per-token pricing. Written by Nikolay Sapunov, CEO at Fora Soft.
Worried about token costs as your AI video feature scales?
Send us your usage pattern, and we will model token spend per user and per month and show where to cut it without losing quality. 250+ video products shipped since 2005.
