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tokentax
confirmedPython · CPUInference & servingJuly 5, 2026
the question
What does different content actually cost in tokens per character?
what came out
The tokenization tax, on a real tokenizer: numbers cost 5x the tokens-per-character of English prose, JSON 2.4x, math 2.2x, code 1.75x, non-English 1.5x. Your context budget is content-dependent.
method & receipts
- Result: confirmed
- Reproducible — one script re-runs the whole thing from scratch.
- Machine-readable claims — every reported number, in a checkable file.
- Tested — a correctness/benchmark suite ships alongside the code.
→ read the code and re-run it
github.com/v-code01/tokentax