Anthropic's newer Claude tokenizer can make the same code file consume materially more tokens than OpenAI's GPT-5.x family, according to The Register, putting Anthropic Claude tokenizer pricing into the centre of enterprise AI cost planning.

In the Playcode test cited by the publication, Claude's token output for a 2,888 character TypeScript file was 73 percent higher than the GPT-5.x family from OpenAI.

Anthropic's own documentation said the updated tokenizer can map the same input to roughly 1.0–1.35× more tokens depending on content type.

Playcode Found Claude Used 1.73x More Tokens On TypeScript

The Register reported that Playcode compared Anthropic's latest tokenizer with OpenAI's GPT-5.x tokenizer across code samples.

The TypeScript example produced 1.73x more Claude tokens than the GPT-5.x tokenizer and 1.32x more than Claude's older tokenizer.

Other code examples in Playcode's comparison were lower but still above the OpenAI baseline.

Rust measured 1.58x, JavaScript 1.52x and Python 1.50x in the comparison cited by The Register.

Providers charge for model input and output by token.

The publication noted that token slicing varies by model, which can make bills hard to predict when the same prompt, file or workflow is moved between model families.

Anthropic Sets Introductory Sonnet Pricing Through August 31, 2026

Anthropic acknowledged the tokenizer change when Sonnet 5 shipped at the end of June, according to The Register.

The company said Sonnet 5 uses an updated tokenizer similar to the one introduced with Claude Opus 4.7.

The introductory Sonnet schedule runs until August 31, 2026, with Anthropic listing $2/million for input and $10/million for output.

After that date, The Register said the listed rates move to $3/million for input and $15/million for output.

The publication said it asked Anthropic for comment but had not received an immediate response.

Anthropic's own note warned that the new tokenizer may raise bills by as much as a third compared with the tokenizer used by older company models.

Ploy Account Claimed GPT-5.6 Finished Pages Faster

The Register also cited marketing platform Ploy, which described moving production work across OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol and Anthropic's Opus 4.8.

Ploy claimed GPT-5.6 finished pages 2.2× faster, cost 27 percent less and used about half the output tokens in that account; The Register did not include an independent benchmark methodology for the claim.

Those performance and cost claims remain vendor- or platform-provided evidence rather than independent benchmark results.

The Register said AI costs should also be judged by task completion and by the model harnesses used around systems such as Claude Code, Codex, Pi and OpenCode.

The Register did not include Anthropic customer bills, independent benchmark methodology, audited task-completion rates or enterprise deployment data for the tokenizer change.