Theme

What a token costs is not what a rate card says

Explore this theme’s evidence over time →

Sources

Attribution and reporting linked by this record; links do not imply independent verification.

The First Frontier AI Token Price Index (theinnermostloop.substack.com)

Rate cards are public and nobody pays them. The gap between the declared price and the transacted one is where caching, routing and model mix live — and it is the only place the real cost curve of intelligence can be read.

Development timeline

Newest reporting dates first. Reporting dates may differ from event dates.

2026-06-16: A volume-weighted index exposes how traffic splits across a lab's models

2026-06-16: The first token benchmark built from transactions rather than rate cards

2026-06-16: A unit-value index inverts three centuries of index design

2026-06-16: Pricing input and output together exposes the real deflation

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What a token costs is not what a rate card says
Innermost Loop KB — secondary record
Reporting date: unknown
KB permalink: https://nicholsn.github.io/innermost-loop-kb/themes/the-posted-price-is-not-the-paid-price
Attributed sources:
- The First Frontier AI Token Price Index — https://theinnermostloop.substack.com/p/the-first-frontier-ai-token-price
This citation does not imply independent verification of linked-source claims.

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