aitc

فارسی

AI Token Counter. Counts the tokens in text, a file, or piped input and estimates what that input costs on popular LLM APIs. It can also compare two files.

Features

• Counts tokens from --text, --file or stdin.
• Estimates the input cost for six models in one table.
• --diff shows the token and cost change between two files.
• --live-prices reads current prices from OpenRouter and falls back to the built-in table if the request fails.

How it works

aitc encodes the input with tiktoken using cl100k_base, then multiplies the count by a per-million-token input price for each model. The built-in prices are constants in tokencount.py. With --live-prices it requests https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models (3 second timeout) and uses the prompt price of each matching model; the output says whether prices were live or the fallback. The first run also lets tiktoken download and cache the cl100k_base vocabulary; your input text is never sent anywhere.

Install

Python 3.12 to 3.15.

uv tool install aitc      # or: pipx install aitc, pip install aitc

From a clone: uv sync && uv run aitc --text "Hello".

Usage

aitc has one command, count, and it runs by default, so aitc --text ... and aitc count --text ... are the same.

aitc --text "Your text here"           # inline text
aitc --file README.md                  # a file
echo "Your text here" | aitc           # stdin
aitc --diff old.txt new.txt            # token and cost difference between two files
aitc --text "Hello" --live-prices      # current prices from OpenRouter
aitc                                   # in a terminal with no input: asks for the text

Sample output:

$ aitc --text "Hello world"
Tokens: 2

Model (input cost)  Cost
GPT-4o              $0.000005
GPT-4o mini         $0.000000
Claude Sonnet 4.5   $0.000006
Claude Haiku 4.5    $0.000002
Gemini 1.5 Pro      $0.000002
Gemini 1.5 Flash    $0.000000

$ aitc --diff old.txt new.txt
File 1: old.txt                        →        4 tokens
File 2: new.txt                        →        7 tokens
Delta:  +3 tokens  (+75.0%)

Model (cost delta)  Delta
GPT-4o              +$0.000007
...

Options of count:

Input is taken in this order: --text, then --file, then stdin. Costs are for input tokens, in USD per model: GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini, Claude Sonnet 4.5, Claude Haiku 4.5, Gemini 1.5 Pro, Gemini 1.5 Flash. Tokens are counted with the cl100k_base encoding, so counts for other model families are estimates.

Common commands

Built on cfuicli, so it looks and behaves like the other tools in this family.

aitc help [command]     # help; -h works on any command
aitc version            # version and git repository (also: -v)
aitc update [--check]   # update the tool itself; --check only compares versions
aitc -q ...             # quiet: no banner or notes (or AITC_QUIET=1)

• A missing required option is asked for when you run the tool in a terminal. In a pipe or in CI it stops with --flag is required. Pass --flag <value> or run interactively. (exit code 2).
• Errors appear in a red box on stderr with a non-zero exit code. Ctrl-C exits with 130.
• Color is used only on a terminal. NO_COLOR=1 turns it off.

Troubleshooting

• File not found: ... and exit code 1: the path given to --file or --diff does not exist.
• [prices: fallback (live fetch failed)]: OpenRouter was unreachable or returned unexpected data, so the built-in prices were used.
• Counts are exact only for OpenAI models that use cl100k_base; treat the Claude and Gemini rows as estimates. The built-in prices can be out of date.

Development

uv sync
uv run ruff check . && uv run ruff format --check .
uv build

License

MIT