TOON vs JSON: Supercharge Your LLM Prompts & Cut Token Costs

Token-Oriented Object Notation (TOON) is a compact, LLM-optimized alternative to JSON for serializing structured, mostly flat/tabular data. By removing repeated field names, quotes and redundant punctuation, TOON reduces token usage by roughly 30–60% in real-world AI workflows, leading to lower API bills, larger usable context windows, and often better model retrieval accuracy.