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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