Why Your TypeScript Code Costs 73% More on Claude Than GPT

The real prices of frontier models. Tokens * Price, right?

I discovered that comparing AI model prices by tokens per million is misleading because tokenizers differ wildly. The same TypeScript file generates 73% more tokens on Claude than on GPT, inflating costs even with identical rate cards. New tokenizers from Anthropic quietly increase bills by over 30% for the same code, making the sticker price a dangerous illusion for developers.

"The price is per token, but a token is not a fixed amount of text: each model's tokenizer cuts the same file into a different number of pieces, and you pay per piece."