同样的问题，模型不同，成本差异达45倍——Token Economics实战指南

The cost of using GPT-4 level performance has decreased to one-hundredth of what it was two years ago. By March 2026, the price gap between 'cheap' and 'premium' models in the LLM API market exceeds 1,000 times, with Mistral Nemo costing $0.02 per million tokens and o3 Pro costing $375. The technology that understands and utilizes this gap is called Token Economics, while the system that automates this utilization is known as Model Routing. In the world of LLMs, tokens are treated as currency, serving as the smallest unit of text processed. The billing method based on tokens is crucial for developers. Notably, output tokens are typically 3 to 10 times more expensive than input tokens, highlighting the need for developers to carefully consider cost structures in practical applications.