# An AI agent can burn 100× the tokens of a chat turn

> Source: <https://aicharts.grok.me/c/agent-tokens>
> Published: 2026-08-16 10:43:18+00:00

Price · 12 Aug 2026 · Illustrative confidence

# An agent can burn 100× the tokens of a chat turn

A chat turn is hundreds to a couple of thousand tokens. A complex agent session can run 50,000–200,000. Multi-agent jobs go past a million.

[Download PNG](/charts/agent-tokens.png)/c/agent-tokens

## How to read this

Illustrative ranges from practitioner guides — not a single official meter. Gartner’s published theme is 5–30× a standard query (coding agents up to 100×). Stanford/Brynjolfsson (arXiv:2604.22750) found ~1,000× tokens on agentic coding vs code-chat (SWE-bench).

## Sources

Practitioner ranges · Gartner (theme) · Stanford Digital Economy Lab 2026