# Token Usage for Images Remains Constant Regardless of Size - Is This a Bug?
**URL:** https://community.openai.com/t/token-usage-for-images-remains-constant-regardless-of-size-is-this-a-bug/951871
**Category:** API
**Created:** [September 22, 2024, 6:55pm UTC](https://community.openai.com/t/token-usage-for-images-remains-constant-regardless-of-size-is-this-a-bug/951871 "2024-09-22T18:55:31Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@joswin86](https://community.openai.com/u/joswin86)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2024, 6:55pm UTC](https://community.openai.com/t/token-usage-for-images-remains-constant-regardless-of-size-is-this-a-bug/951871/1 "2024-09-22T18:55:31Z")
Hi everyone,
I’ve been using the OpenAI API to process invoice summaries with images. I have a function that takes images and a prompt to generate a summary. Here’s the function I’m using:
```auto
async function processInvoiceSummary(images: string[], prompt: string) {
const messages: any[] = [
{
role: 'user',
content: [
{
type: 'text',
text: prompt
}
]
}
];
images.forEach((image) => {
messages[0].content.push({
type: 'image_url',
image_url: {
url: image,
detail: 'high'
}
});
});
const completion = await openai.chat.completions.create({
model: gptModel,
messages: messages
});
const summary = completion.choices[0].message.content;
return { summary, usage: completion.usage };
}
```
I am testing it with 4 images, and the result for token usage is always the same, like this:
```auto
{
"prompt_tokens": 103310,
"completion_tokens": 123,
"total_tokens": 103433,
"completion_tokens_details": { "reasoning_tokens": 0 }
}
```
tried changing the image sizes from the original 1153x1536 to 3756x5000, but the token usage still remains the same.
This doesn’t seem right, based on the documentation which mentions:
> - `high` will enable “high res” mode, which first allows the model to first see the low res image (using 85 tokens) and then creates detailed crops using 170 tokens for each 512px x 512px tile.
Am I doing something wrong here, or is this a known issue/bug? Any insights or advice would be greatly appreciated!
---
### Author:  [@\_j](https://community.openai.com/u/_j)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2024, 7:11pm UTC](https://community.openai.com/t/token-usage-for-images-remains-constant-regardless-of-size-is-this-a-bug/951871/2 "2024-09-22T19:11:41Z")
I just did a deep dive into what you can expect for token usage (and rate usage) for a variety of resolutions, detail settings, and models.
> [@Are the vision tokens added to the tokens per request limit?](https://community.openai.com/t/are-the-vision-tokens-added-to-the-tokens-per-request-limit/941635/4):
>
> Yes, you can run it up over the input context limit on image tokens For example that can be demonstrated more quickly with a tier-1 account, you’ll get an API error if sending 30000 tokens that are considered towards the rate limit. However, the rate consumption hit is NOT the tokens of input prompt. It seems the API just guesses at or provides an arbitrary rate for images. To make a full demonstration, I created code with an image generator to make an arbitrary number of images at specified …
If the image resolution at detail:high takes the same number of **tiles** , the cost will be the same. This means anything from 513x513 to 1024x1024, or anything in between, results in 4 overlay tiles (on top of a base “low” image.)
There are also peculiarities in the internal downsizing even on detail:high. Your image will be downsized so the shortest dimension is at most 768 pixels. Send 3000x3000, the model sees 768x768 - 4 tiles of 512x512. Send 2000x500, the model sees 2000x500, also 4 tiles of 512x512.
---
### Author:  [@sps](https://community.openai.com/u/sps)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2024, 7:42pm UTC](https://community.openai.com/t/token-usage-for-images-remains-constant-regardless-of-size-is-this-a-bug/951871/3 "2024-09-22T19:42:09Z")
Welcome @joswin86
It’s not a bug. This cost calculation is by design.
You can use the [image cost calculators for your model of choice on the pricing page](https://openai.com/api/pricing/) to calculate and get a breakdown of how the costs are calculated for an image size.
> **Here's the cost breakdown for a 1536x1536 image with gpt-4o-mini:**
>
> | Price per 1M tokens (fixed) | $0.15 |
> | --- | --- |
> | Resized width | 768 |
> | Resized height | 768 |
> | 512 × 512 tiles | 2 × 2 |
> | Total tiles | 4 |
> | Base tokens | 2833 |
> | Tile tokens | 5667 × 4 = 22668 |
> | Total tokens | 25501 |
> | Total price | $0.003825 |
> **Here's the cost calculation for the same model for an image of 3756x5000**
>
> | Price per 1M tokens (fixed) | $0.15 |
> | --- | --- |
> | Resized width | 768 |
> | Resized height | 1023 |
> | 512 × 512 tiles | 2 × 2 |
> | Total tiles | 4 |
> | Base tokens | 2833 |
> | Tile tokens | 5667 × 4 = 22668 |
> | Total tokens | 25501 |
> | Total price | $0.003825 |
---
### Author:  [@\_j](https://community.openai.com/u/_j)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2024, 8:11pm UTC](https://community.openai.com/t/token-usage-for-images-remains-constant-regardless-of-size-is-this-a-bug/951871/4 "2024-09-22T20:11:31Z")
> [@sps](#):
>
> with gpt-4o-mini
I’m trying to get `o1-preview` to make an app, show what it can do. I provided all the rules and specifications.
The playground is designed to time out and take your money apparently. Over to my chatbot.
The first go was terrible: 100x500 = 16 high detail tiles? It couldn’t be improved.
Abandon. Second new extensive prompt covering every area of failure, even explaining the origin of tiles would start at corners, close but no cookie.
You get the idea though. How OpenAI could present this on the web.
---
### Author:  [@joswin86](https://community.openai.com/u/joswin86)
#### Post date: [September 23, 2024, 9:49am UTC](https://community.openai.com/t/token-usage-for-images-remains-constant-regardless-of-size-is-this-a-bug/951871/5 "2024-09-23T09:49:02Z")
Thanks for the insights!
Just to clarify, since my images always have the same ratio (A4 format), does that mean it doesn’t make any difference if I increase the resolution beyond 768px on the smaller side? From what I understand, as long as the smaller side exceeds 768px, the model will downsize it to 768px, and the token usage will remain the same regardless of any further increase in resolution, correct?
Appreciate the help!
---
### Author:  [@\_j](https://community.openai.com/u/_j)
#### Post date: [September 23, 2024, 1:24pm UTC](https://community.openai.com/t/token-usage-for-images-remains-constant-regardless-of-size-is-this-a-bug/951871/6 "2024-09-23T13:24:51Z")
You have reached a correct conclusion. As:
A large A4 paper image (actually any A paper size in tall aspect ratio) would always resize to 1087x768. That then would consume six token tiles of high detail, as the longest dimension exceeds two tiles.
You can consider then the economy of sending 1024x725 as the image, where the expense would drop to four high quality tiles.
Or consider the quality increase if you were to use this strategy:
- The page is sized to 1024x1448 by your code.
- You take a vew of the top at 1024x768, and a view of the bottom at 1024x768
- 88 pixels of overlap between the two images give some commonality for the vision to join.
- Those two images placed into the same user message.
- Paying for two four tile images instead of one single tile image
The AI would have higher resolution text and more tokens of encoded image in general to contain information.
---
### Author:  [@\_j](https://community.openai.com/u/_j)
#### Post date: [September 23, 2024, 2:32pm UTC](https://community.openai.com/t/token-usage-for-images-remains-constant-regardless-of-size-is-this-a-bug/951871/7 "2024-09-23T14:32:29Z")
# OpenAI GPT-4 computer vision image pricing
## Comparative breakdown by model
### How much does it cost to send the same image to different models?
Here is detail:low (detail high can be up to 17 times greater cost)
| Model | 1M tokens ($) | Tokens X | Per 1k | Cost Ratio |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| gpt-4o-2024-08-06 | $2.50 | 1 | $0.213 | 1 |
| gpt-4o-mini-2024-07-18 | $0.15 | 33.33 | $0.425 | 2 |
| gpt-4o-2024-05-13 | $5.00 | 1 | $0.425 | 2 |
| gpt-4-turbo-2024-04-09 | $10.00 | 1 | $0.850 | 4 |
| gpt-4-0125-preview | $10.00 | 1 | $0.850 | 4 |
| gpt-4-1106-vision-preview | $10.00 | 1 | $0.850 | 4 |
- gpt-4o-mini: The model-received image tokens are multiplied in reporting and billing
- aliases that point to these actual model names are excluded
---
### Author:  [@curt.kennedy](https://community.openai.com/u/curt.kennedy)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2026, 11:52pm UTC](https://community.openai.com/t/token-usage-for-images-remains-constant-regardless-of-size-is-this-a-bug/951871/11 "2026-04-24T23:52:17Z")