Token-maxxing is dead, OpenRouter's token usage plateaus

jpalawaga

Dead just like it was in June?

epsteingpt

Absolutely sure this is bullish.

simonw

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.

jedberg

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.

abalashov

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...

noosphr

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.

obilgic

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

CoolestBeans

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.

bunderbunder

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.

zetamax

Is this 7 days rolling, or for the week that just started, compared to the last full week? Everything up for the day chart.

skeledrew

Idk about others, but the usage that I'd usually put into OpenRouter is now going to OpenCode Go.

throwaway23597

I'm actually gonna go against the grain here and say that token maxxing is not dead. In fact, it's just getting started. Maybe not in the short term. I mean, who knows how things are gonna shake out financially speaking. In the long term though, I think people are really just getting started figuring out creative ways to leverage these agents. And especially when they keep getting smarter over time, the surface of use cases is just going to grow and grow and grow. I think the present plateau is simply just a function of costs being a little too high for comfort at the moment combined with the technology just moving so fast that I think it's kind of outpaced us a little bit.

totetsu

After getting a shock -$30 balance just cache writing a session into Astra, I started to finally go down the rabbit hole of token efficiency. There is a lot happening in the space of task routing, and portable memories, and self training classifiers on task success etc. It got particularly confounding tying to automate keeping track of all the different ways the different providers keep track of billing and credits, and account types, and incentive tiers..

Skunkleton

What? Setting aside the valid arguments elsewhere, the graph doesn't even show that. Switch it to "log" and look at a straight line through the data points. The recent data points are within regular variation.

schmookeeg

I've been using Openrouter for API calls and Claude Max200 for CLI coding. Both for about 18 months now. I have several apps hooked to openrouter for workload processing. Mostly OCR and some inference and some RAG + prompt + output stages. It works great. I literally just got a note from Anthropic that my Max200 now includes API credit. On receipt I ported over my busiest app stage from openrouter/gemini to haiku, with openrouter acting as an overflow. $200 saved. Boom. I don't think this is bullish for Openrouter. It took claude 2 minutes to build a primary/secondary API callout for my workload. That's not a very deep moat. I will still use openrouter to try new models and A/B test "current hotness" for my assorted tasks, but the spend from me is gonna drop, by, well, $200/mo or so.