Understanding Tokens in AI: How Much Are Your LLM Requests REALLY Costing You

🔍 Ever wondered how much your AI requests are actually costing you? In this comprehensive tutorial, we dive deep into understanding tokens - the currency of Large Language Models (LLMs) - and build a practical Spring Boot application to track and monitor your token usage. Learn how to create a professional token tracking system using Spring AI, complete with automated logging using Spring AOP. Perfect for Java developers working with AI who want to optimize their costs and understand their usage patterns. What You’ll Learn: • Understanding tokens and their impact on AI costs • How to track prompt tokens, generation tokens, and total usage • Building a Spring Boot application with Spring AI integration • Implementing custom response objects for better data handling • Using Spring AOP for automated token usage logging • Best practices for token monitoring in production applications 🎓 Prerequisites: Basic Java knowledge Familiarity with Spring Boot Understanding of REST APIs ⭐️ Resources Mentioned: GitHub Repository: 📚 Chapters: 00:00 Introduction to Tokens 01:43 Spring AI Course Announcement 02:04 What are Tokens? 03:11 Token Pricing Structure 03:49 Context Window Size Explained 04:54 Building Token Demo Application 12:54 Adding Custom Response Logging 14:13 Implementing AOP Solution