What costs tokens in Astell?

Understand what chat and ingestion activities consume tokens

Does chat consume tokens?

Yes. All chat consumes tokens drawn from your organization's monthly token pool. Flash is cheapest per turn, then Exacto and Pro. Tokens are also consumed by Processed Data ingestion, Astell Actions, and Audits. Native Data syncing and search are always free.

What chat usage is billable?

For every model, chat usage draws from your token pool based on what you send and what the model returns (input plus output), at the model's rate, with Flash cheapest and Exacto and Pro higher. Internal and background model usage (for example, memory management and other system operations) is not charged to your token balance. Exact per-message cost varies with the length and complexity of the conversation.

What types of content consume tokens during ingestion?

Non-text processing requires extra work to process and index content: documents are priced by the amount of content processed; video processing includes transcription, diarization, and frame analysis; audio processing includes transcription and diarization; embedded images inside documents are processed separately.

How are documents priced in tokens?

Documents cost 5 tokens per page, slide, or sheet: you pay for the amount of content Astell has to process and index.

Supported formats: PDF, .docx, .pptx, .xlsx, Google Docs/Sheets/Slides, Pages/Numbers/Keynote
PDFs and Word / Google Docs: 5 tokens per page
PowerPoint / Slides: 5 tokens per slide
Excel / Sheets: 5 tokens per sheet (tab)

Examples: 10-page PDF = 50 tokens; 25-slide deck = 125 tokens; 3-sheet workbook = 15 tokens; 100-page manual = 500 tokens.

How are images priced in tokens, including embedded images?

Images cost 1 token per image, regardless of file size.

Supported formats: JPEG/JPG, PNG, GIF, SVG, WebP, HEIC, BMP, TIFF
Profile pictures: 0 tokens (they aren't processed for search)
Embedded images inside a document are processed separately. You pay the document rate plus 1 token per embedded image. Example: a 10-slide deck with 5 embedded photos = (10 × 5) + (5 × 1) = 55 tokens.

How are audio and video priced in tokens?

Video costs 8 tokens per minute and includes automatic transcription and frame analysis. Supported formats: MP4, MOV, AVI, WebM, MKV. Examples: 5-min demo = 40; 30-min recording = 240; 2-hour video = 960. Tip: for long recordings, extract audio only or process key segments.

Audio costs 2 tokens per minute and includes automatic transcription; once transcribed, the text becomes searchable. Supported formats: MP3, WAV, M4A, OGG, FLAC. Examples: 10-min snippet = 20; 60-min meeting audio = 120; 5-min voice memo = 10.

How are meetings priced in tokens?

Meeting ingestion costs 10 tokens per minute and covers transcription, speaker diarization, and the linking of meeting content into your people and project graph. A 30-minute meeting consumes 300 tokens; a 60-minute meeting consumes 600 tokens. Audio-only recordings (without meeting context) are priced at the lower 2 tokens per minute audio rate.

How are web pages priced in tokens?

Web pages cost 5 tokens per page: this covers both pages returned by Astell's web search tool and pages fetched directly by Astell. Each unique URL the system retrieves on your behalf counts as one page. A web search that returns 10 results consumes 50 tokens; following 3 of those results into additional fetches adds another 15 tokens (3 × 5).

How are People and Company entities priced in tokens?

People and Company entries in Astell's people graph cost 25 tokens per entity. This covers the structured profile Astell builds for an individual or organization across your connected sources: identity, role, relationships, and the context Astell needs to disambiguate them across your loops. You pay once per entity; existing entities don't re-charge as new context flows in.

Does the Astell API use my platform tokens?

The Astell API (ingestion as a service: unstructured data to text and metadata) is a separate product from the Astell platform. Anyone can purchase API access; it is not limited to a specific plan tier. API usage is billed in dollars per unit processed (see Astell API pricing) and is independent of your platform token pool: platform tokens and pay-as-you-go token rates do not apply to API calls.