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Arabic Token Counter & API Cost Calculator

Arabic is the most expensive major language per word for LLM APIs: 2.9 tokens per word versus 1.33 for English. Paste any Arabic text below to see the exact token count and what it costs across all 37 models.

What 1,000 Arabic words costs on every model

At 2.9 tokens per word, 1,000 Arabic words is roughly 2,900 tokens. The table prices that volume on every model.

Input = 2,900 Arabic tokens. Output = 2,900 generated tokens. The ratio is 2.9 tokens per Arabic word, measured on cl100k-style BPE tokenizers. Actual counts vary by model and text.

Why Arabic costs more

Arabic is the most expensive major language per word for LLM APIs. Three reasons:

• Under-represented vocabulary. Most tokenizers are trained on English-heavy corpora, so Arabic characters fragment into more pieces.
• Morphological complexity. Arabic prefixes (ال، و، ب، ل) and suffixes (ها، كم، نا) are separate tokens, not part of the root word.
• Diacritics. Tashkeel (fatha, damma, kasra) are often separate tokens, doubling the count for vocalized text.

How to reduce Arabic token costs

• Remove diacritics where the meaning is clear without them.
• Avoid overly long compound words. Break them into shorter phrases.
• Use prompt caching for repeated Arabic prefixes.
• Consider a cheaper model for Arabic-heavy workloads — the premium is proportionally larger.

Keep going

• Tokens to words converter
• Tokens per word in Arabic
• Characters to tokens
• All 37 models ranked by price
• AI Cost Calculator (blog)

Calculate a real monthly bill

FAQ

How many tokens is one Arabic word?

Roughly 2.9 tokens per word on cl100k-style tokenizers. Arabic is the most expensive major language per word because prefixes, suffixes and diacritics split into separate tokens.

Why does Arabic cost more than English?

English averages 1.33 tokens per word. Arabic averages 2.9 because the tokenizer vocabulary under-represents Arabic script, so each word fragments into 2-3 pieces.

How much does 1,000 Arabic words cost?

About 2,900 tokens. At $2 per million input tokens that is $0.0058 per 1,000 words — roughly 2.2x the English cost for the same text.

Does the ratio change by model?

Slightly. GPT-4, Claude, and Gemini all use BPE tokenizers with different vocabularies, but Arabic consistently costs 2-3x English across all of them.

How do I reduce Arabic token costs?

Remove diacritics (tashkeel) where possible, avoid overly long compound words, and use prompt caching for repeated Arabic prefixes.

Keep going

• Tokens per word in Arabic
• Tokens to words
• Characters to tokens
• All models
• All 37 models ranked by price
• Run your own volumes in the calculator

Calculate a real monthly bill