{
  "billing_concept": {
    "id": "bil_token_based_pricing",
    "name": "Token-based pricing",
    "category": "token_pricing",
    "description": "The Anthropic API bills usage based on the number of tokens processed, not a flat per-request fee — both the tokens sent in a request (input) and the tokens generated in the response (output) count toward billed usage.",
    "how_it_works": "Each API call's cost is a function of input token count plus output token count, multiplied by that model's per-token rate. Different models have different rates, and larger/more capable models generally cost more per token than smaller ones.",
    "source_note": "General mechanism description; no specific dollar-per-token figures are asserted here. This session did not perform a live web search to confirm current exact pricing, so no numeric rate is stated.",
    "created_at": "2026-07-02 08:30:36",
    "cite_as": "https://subagentcredits.com/api/billing-concepts/bil_token_based_pricing"
  }
}