Price sheets, usage dashboards, and earnings summaries compress a thousand thousands into a suffix on the number. Written as 1M, the figure is exactly 1,000,000. An illustration such as $0.14 per 1M tokens means fourteen cents for one million tokens, not fourteen cents for a single token. In finance, $1M is one million dollars.
A thousand is 1,000. This quantity is a thousand of those thousands. The next step on product pages and in finance is a Billion (B), the letter in 1B. That figure is 1,000,000,000, or one thousand times 1M.
How Token Prices Use the Count
Usage pages for Artificial Intelligence (AI) models often post a rate once per this count, because a fraction of a cent per token is hard to compare. An Application Programming Interface (API) invoice may price prompt tokens separately from generated tokens, and each of those rates still uses 1,000,000 tokens as the unit.
- Illustration rate: A posted rate of $0.14 per 1M tokens, used here only as an illustration, charges $0.14 when a job consumes 1,000,000 tokens.
- Partial volume: At that same illustration, 500,000 tokens cost $0.07, because 500,000 divided by 1,000,000, times $0.14, is $0.07. A 2,000-token call at that rate is $0.00028. Other fees can change a live invoice.
- Single-token slice: Dividing the illustration rate by 1,000,000 gives the illustration’s price for one token, $0.00000014. The posted rate is easier to read per this count than as that fraction of a cent.
Round Revenue and Item Volume
Round figures in earnings, budgets, and audience reports use the same suffix. A dashboard’s 1M is 1,000,000 of whatever the column counts.
- Currency: $1M is 1,000,000 dollars. A line written as $4.2M is 4,200,000 dollars. The dollar sign names the currency, and the suffix only removes zeros.
- Item counts: 1M page views, 1M subscribers, or 1M tokens each mean 1,000,000 of that item. The suffix does not change what is being counted.
- Smaller step: 1,000 is a thousand. Some dashboards shorten that smaller count to 1K. That suffix is not this quantity, and it is not 1M.
Count Suffix and the Mega Prefix
The count suffix and the SI prefix mega both name 106. They are not the same written form.
- Suffix on the number: The letter follows the digits, as in 1M tokens or $1M. It stands in for six zeros on a count of items or of money.
- Prefix on the unit: Mega is written before a unit name, as in megawatt or megahertz. One megawatt is 1,000,000 watts. One megahertz is 1,000,000 hertz. Those are physical units, not a stack of tokens or dollars.
- Same magnitude, different job: Reading a unit prefix as a price suffix, or the reverse, mixes a measurement with a count. 1M tokens is a volume. A megawatt is power.
Common written forms name different counts, even when they sit next to each other on a price card.
| Written Form | Equals | How to Read It |
| one million | 1,000,000 | The count written in words |
| 1,000,000 | 1,000,000 | Digits for a thousand thousands |
| 1M tokens | 1,000,000 tokens | A volume of tokens |
| $0.14 per 1M tokens | $0.14 for 1,000,000 tokens | An illustration of a rate, not a live vendor price |
| $1M | 1,000,000 dollars | A round money figure |
| 1K | 1,000 | A compact thousand, not this count |
| 1B | 1,000,000,000 | A billion, one thousand times 1M |
| megawatt | 1,000,000 watts | Mega prefixed to a unit, not a count suffix |