Users Question Billing for Hidden Reasoning Tokens
outsider787 · reddit · 2026-07-10
The post argues that the current AI billing model is "flawed": - **Input token billing** makes sense, as more input generally means more compute. - **Output token billing** gets awkward after introducing massive "thinking budgets": users don't care how much the model thinks internally, only the final answer. - The bigger issue: many reasoning tokens are **unauditable**, especially in services that hide the thinking process. Users are essentially paying for invisible compute. The author calls this a "trust me" billing model, suggesting either adjusting prices to be more honest or explicitly calling it "compute-based billing" instead of "output tokens".
Related event: Paper Questions Token-Based AI Pricing(2 posts)→
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