What Is a Good Tokens Per Second Speed for AI?

AI models write one token at a time, and a token is usually a piece of a word. Speed is measured in tokens per second.

In English, one token is about 0.75 words. Most adults read at about 4 words a second, which is roughly 5 tokens a second. So any model faster than that writes quicker than you can read.

For chat, 20 to 50 tokens a second feels quick. For long answers, code or agents that run many steps, more speed saves real time, because you wait for the whole answer before you can use it.

Speed isn’t the only thing you feel. Time to first token is the wait before anything appears, and a short wait often matters more than a high writing speed.

Use our tokens per second visualizer to watch text arrive at any speed, and see the difference for yourself.