All terms
Inference & Serving
Thinking Budget
A setting that controls how much a reasoning model 'thinks' before answering, trading speed and cost against quality.
Definition
A thinking budget is a control that decides how much hidden reasoning a model is allowed to do before it gives an answer. Reasoning models work through a problem step by step behind the scenes, and more of that internal 'thinking' usually means better answers on hard tasks — but also more time and higher cost. Different providers expose this in different ways: OpenAI calls it a reasoning effort setting (low, medium, or high), while Anthropic lets you set a token budget for extended thinking. Turning it up helps on complex problems; turning it down keeps simple requests fast and cheap.