There are a few problems with using OpenRouter's public statistics to make statements about the wider field:

- It only tracks companies that have decided to use OpenRouter to help them switch models - which biases towards companies that like open weights. Anyone using OpenAI or Anthropic directly is much less likely to be represented.

- OpenRouter don't share the number of unique users represented in those numbers. I worry a lot about whales - are there a few giant users of OpenRouter who, if they change their preferred model, instantly affect the global leaderboards?

In this case I suspect the numbers are affected by the release of Claude Haiku 5.5 and GPT-6 Luna - both excellent inexpensive models, which may well take market share from some of the models that OpenRouter is serving. OpenAI and Anthropic have the most mature client support so I expect it's more likely people will switch away from OpenRouter if those are their daily drivers.

Happy to be convinced otherwise if anyone has useful data that I've missed.

I don't think you can draw an accurate narrative from two data points but I'm going to do it anyway. This and the slowing in revenue growth at Anthropic are not terrific signs. This should be the era of exponential growth for the AI industry. Even if the unit economics are sound at these prices, companies really need more revenue to service their current debt obligations and for now that can't come from price it has to come from volume. Furthermore, this is OpenRouter's statistics which partially represents the cost conscious section of the market and this doesn't line up with an induced demand story.

Again, two data points do not make a full story but if you're an AI bull this is not what you want to see.

I don’t think we can conclude that from this graph. Look at all the earlier points in time where it “flattened out” for about as many months. We tend to unconsciously overlook them because, with a sharp rise on either side, it obviously looks like noise.

I can’t make the same assumption here because I can only see what’s on the left, but that in no way implies that the opposite assumption is any more warranted.

The bigger problem is not token consumption plateauing, total token spent is lot lower than before. we are at %20 of our total peak spent. compared to couple months ago.

We are able to purchase similar level intelligence at much lower prices now. Even sonnet 5.5 is becoming an overkill for most of our agentic workload.

ps. our total token usage last 30 days is around 30B

Or maybe Codex/Claude Code got better and more people are just using those?

Or more people are using harnesses that do what openrouter does so they don't need it anymore?

Or they are using other GPU providers directly to run their open source models?

I don't think this data is conclusive. It's a very unique subset who are using openrouter.

I've had a hell of a time with more complex model setups in open router and have gone to just using the underlying APIs directly.

While we don't "token-maxx", our usage of Kimi K3, GLM 5.3, MiMo and Qwen goes up, up, up -- with Kimi K3 dominating. Our usage of Claude Code and OpenAI has been nonexistent for a year and a half...

Dead just like it was in June?

Absolutely sure this is bullish.