Packet metering systems and methods optimize utilization of green or committed tokens. The packet metering method includes receiving a packet of size B in an interval; and marking a color of the packet as green for committed, yellow for excess, or red for discard, based on the size B, a current committed token bucket for the interval, a current excess token bucket, and an overflow counter used to preserve unused green tokens from previous intervals while preserving Committed Information Rate (CIR) and Committed Burst Size (CBS) for the interval.