diff --git a/litellm/utils.py b/litellm/utils.py
index 875ffd33feb..8df027b8745 100644
--- a/litellm/utils.py
+++ b/litellm/utils.py
@@ -3042,6 +3042,8 @@ def openai_token_counter(
         # This is the case where we need to count tokens for a streamed response. We should NOT add +3 tokens per message in this branch
         num_tokens = len(encoding.encode(text, disallowed_special=()))
         return num_tokens
+    elif text is not None:
+        num_tokens = len(encoding.encode(text, disallowed_special=()))
     num_tokens += 3  # every reply is primed with <|start|>assistant<|message|>
     return num_tokens