TOKENBURN INDEX — TBX · EST. 2026
Every prompt has a burn rate.
AI is cheap until your agents start thinking out loud. TokenBurn Index measures the tokens — and the money — your AI habits quietly torch, then judges you for it.
THE BURNMETER
PASTE · MEASURE · REPENT“Your prompt works out. It just refuses to cut carbs.”
| Model | 1 run | 100 runs | 1,000 runs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Fable 5 Anthropic | $0.04 | $3.60 | $36.00 |
| Claude Opus 5 Anthropic | $0.02 | $1.80 | $18.00 |
| Claude Opus 4.8 Anthropic | $0.02 | $1.80 | $18.00 |
| Claude Sonnet 5 Anthropic | $0.0072 | $0.72 | $7.20 |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 Anthropic | $0.0036 | $0.36 | $3.60 |
| GPT-5.6 OpenAI | $0.01 | $1.44 | $14.40 |
| GPT-5.6 Cyber OpenAI | $0.05 | $5.34 | $53.44 |
| GPT-5.5 OpenAI | $0.02 | $2.14 | $21.38 |
| GPT-5.4 OpenAI | $0.01 | $1.07 | $10.69 |
| GPT-5.6 Terra OpenAI | $0.0086 | $0.85 | $8.55 |
| GPT-5 Mini OpenAI | $0.0014 | $0.14 | $1.41 |
| GPT-5.6 Luna OpenAI | $0.0009 | $0.09 | $0.85 |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro Google | $0.0086 | $0.85 | $8.55 |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash Google | $0.0027 | $0.27 | $2.70 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash Google | $0.0064 | $0.64 | $6.41 |
| Gemini Omni Flash Google | $0.0064 | $0.64 | $6.41 |
| Gemini 3.7 Flash Google | $0.0027 | $0.27 | $2.70 |
| Gemini 3 Flash Google | $0.0021 | $0.21 | $2.14 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite Google | $0.0018 | $0.18 | $1.76 |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro DeepSeek | $0.0015 | $0.15 | $1.49 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash DeepSeek | $0.0005 | $0.05 | $0.49 |
| Kimi K2.6 Moonshot AI | $0.0029 | $0.29 | $2.91 |
you could help me with something. the tone should be friendly but professional. make sure the tone is friendly but professional at all times. ---------------------------------------- **THE TASK** write a short email to my team letting them know that the meeting moved from 3pm to 4pm? keep it short. keep it short, and make sure the tone is friendly but professional. The meeting moved from 3pm to 4pm. the email should be short. a simple, short email. the time change. ----------------------------------------
Count the damage
Paste a prompt, a conversation, an agent workflow. Get estimated tokens, cost across 22 models, and a Token Burn Score from 0 to 100.
Same text, 70x price range
The same request costs $0.001 or $0.16 depending on the model. Most teams never look. You are about to.
Get judged, then optimized
A dry-humored diagnosis, a leaner version of your prompt, and the savings at 1,000 runs. Shame is a feature, not a bug.
AI WASTE HABITS — 2026
ALL HABITS →Re-pasting the entire conversation "for context"
The model already had the context. Now it has it twice, at input prices.
Agents left on auto-approve overnight
You woke up to 340 tool calls and a refactor nobody asked for.
A 2,000-token system prompt for a yes/no question
The answer was 'no'. The invoice was not.
HALL OF SHAME
ALL CASES →“I used 40,000 tokens to ask for a button color.”
EST. 40,000 TOKENS · $0.42 · The button is still blue.
“My agent rewrote half the repo to rename a variable.”
EST. 1,200,000 TOKENS · $14.70 · The variable is now camelCase. The budget is not.
$AI is cheap until your agents start thinking out loud.
$More tokens. Same result. Beautifully expensive.
$Your AI workflow is not free. It is just quiet.
$Your agent did not work harder. It just spent more.
AI Tokenomics, explained
What tokens actually are, why output costs 4-8x more than input, what cached tokens change, and why agents multiply everything. No hype, no doom — just the meter.