Discussion: Tokens Are the Wrong Unit to Measure LLM Costs
willccbb · x · 2026-07-19
The author points out that while it's inaccurate to simply claim "smaller models are better," large models like GPT-4.5 and Llama-405B are actually less efficient than smaller versions within their respective series.
They emphasize that cost is a key factor when evaluating models, and the industry's current standard of pricing by token is flawed. This approach fails to offer a fair and intuitive apples-to-apples comparison of actual efficiency across models with varying parameter sizes.
Related event: Evaluating Token as a Flawed Metric for LLM Costs(2 posts)→
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