diff --git a/examples/tokenize/tokenize.cpp b/examples/tokenize/tokenize.cpp
index c817be566cf54..f36684ea358f9 100644
--- a/examples/tokenize/tokenize.cpp
+++ b/examples/tokenize/tokenize.cpp
@@ -32,6 +32,7 @@ static void print_usage_information(const char * argv0, FILE * stream) {
     fprintf(stream, "    --no-parse-special                   do not parse control tokens.\n");
     fprintf(stream, "    --log-disable                        disable logs. Makes stderr quiet when loading the model.\n");
     fprintf(stream, "    --show-count                         print the total number of tokens.\n");
+    fprintf(stream, "    --show-count-only                    only print the total number of tokens (skip the printing of the actual tokens).\n");
 }
 
 static void llama_log_callback_null(ggml_log_level level, const char * text, void * user_data) {
@@ -199,6 +200,7 @@ int main(int raw_argc, char ** raw_argv) {
     bool no_parse_special = false;
     bool disable_logging = false;
     bool show_token_count = false;
+    bool show_token_count_only = false;
     const char * model_path = NULL;
     const char * prompt_path = NULL;
     const char * prompt_arg = NULL;
@@ -259,6 +261,9 @@ int main(int raw_argc, char ** raw_argv) {
         else if (arg == "--show-count") {
             show_token_count = true;
         }
+        else if (arg == "--show-count-only") {
+            show_token_count_only = show_token_count = true;
+        }
         else {
             fprintf(stderr, "Error: unknown option '%s'\n", argv[iarg].c_str());
             return 1;
@@ -369,30 +374,32 @@ int main(int raw_argc, char ** raw_argv) {
     std::vector<llama_token> tokens;
     tokens = ::llama_tokenize(model, prompt, add_bos, parse_special);
 
-    if (printing_ids) {
-        printf("[");
-    }
-
-    for (int i = 0; i < (int) tokens.size(); i++) {
+    if (!show_token_count_only) {
         if (printing_ids) {
-            if (i > 0) {
-                printf(", ");
-            }
-            printf("%d", tokens[i]);
-        } else {
-            bool invalid_utf8 = false;
-            printf("%6d -> '", tokens[i]);
-            write_utf8_cstr_to_stdout(llama_token_to_piece(ctx, tokens[i]).c_str(), invalid_utf8);
-            if (invalid_utf8) {
-                printf("' (utf-8 decode failure)\n");
+            printf("[");
+        }
+
+        for (int i = 0; i < (int) tokens.size(); i++) {
+            if (printing_ids) {
+                if (i > 0) {
+                    printf(", ");
+                }
+                printf("%d", tokens[i]);
             } else {
-                printf("'\n");
+                bool invalid_utf8 = false;
+                printf("%6d -> '", tokens[i]);
+                write_utf8_cstr_to_stdout(llama_token_to_piece(ctx, tokens[i]).c_str(), invalid_utf8);
+                if (invalid_utf8) {
+                    printf("' (utf-8 decode failure)\n");
+                } else {
+                    printf("'\n");
+                }
             }
         }
-    }
 
-    if (printing_ids) {
-        printf("]\n");
+        if (printing_ids) {
+            printf("]\n");
+        }
     }
 
     if (show_token_count) {