Sun 7 Jun 2026 07.00 EDT Share AI is getting more expensive to use Every time an AI chatbot or agent issues a response, it is measured in “tokens” – building blocks of language that can be words, punctuation marks or syllables. (For example, OpenAI says the phrase “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” is worth 11 tokens.) It also uses tokens to measure inputs, such as the prompt you type into ChatGPT. The costs of these vary per model; OpenAI prices it at $5 a million input tokens for GPT-5.5, and $30 a million output tokens (ie the response given to your prompt). The problem for subscribers is that token costs are going up massively, even as companies everywhere are encouraging employees to “tokenmaxx”, that is, really go hard on using AI. The problem for AI companies is that they still aren’t charging enough. The inherent promise in AI use is that the money a company spends on using these tools is more than paid back in improved productivity – a measure of economic efficiency, where improved productivity means you get more output from each worker. If this trade-off isn’t happening, then the assumptions underpinning AI valuations – and policies – is undermined. “The costs are getting completely out of control,” says Liam Betsworth, founder of the British AI startup Pendra. Software developers in his circle are using agents to code, he said, starting with the cheapest subscription, and very quickly moving on to the most expensive package. They aren’t alone – news site Axios recently reported on an unnamed company that spent $500m in a month on licences for Claude Code. 6.