What the First Token-Level Energy Benchmark Tells You About LLM API Costs
A research team led by Song Ci at Yuncun New Energy (Tsinghua-affiliated) just published what they describe as the first token-level joule measurement of LLM inference energy. I read it. Here is the short version for anyone shipping LLM-powered products: the model you route to matters far more for your API bill than most teams assume — and “bigger” is usually the wrong default. If you build on an AI API gateway, this report is essentially a price-efficiency map for your routing table. ...