Coding agent tokens
Are coding agents doing more work?
Contributes to: Is it being used to build?. Signal score: 79 / 100. Relative weight within this question: 1.
StatusGrowing
Latest value205T
Year over year+3179%
Distance from highAt its high
Caution
Tools like Cursor and direct use of AI labs may not appear here, so this undercounts agent use.
The list of ranked apps grew over time, and more tokens can mean less efficient work rather than more of it.
Observed trend
Tokens used by ranked coding apps on OpenRouter per month, in trillions.
Tokens used by ranked coding apps on OpenRouter per month, in trillions. · 2025-01 – 2026-10
View data table
| Period / observation | Tokens used by ranked coding apps on OpenRouter per month, in trillions. |
|---|---|
| 2025-01 | 0.9 |
| 2025-02 | 1.3 |
| 2025-03 | 2.2 |
| 2025-04 | 3 |
| 2025-05 | 2.3 |
| 2025-06 | 2 |
| 2025-07 | 2.5 |
| 2025-08 | 4.2 |
| 2025-09 | 6.8 |
| 2025-10 | 6.2 |
| 2025-11 | 7 |
| 2025-12 | 4.3 |
| 2026-01 | 4.5 |
| 2026-02 | 13.4 |
| 2026-03 | 29.9 |
| 2026-04 | 30.8 |
| 2026-05 | 28 |
| 2026-06 | 47.5 |
| 2026-07 | 60 |
| 2026-08 | 101.3 |
| 2026-09 | 143 |
| 2026-10 | 204.6 |
What it measures
- Metric
- Tokens used by the coding apps OpenRouter ranks, latest full month
- Solved if
- Coding agents do most of the work
- Signal score
- 79 / 100. 227 times the tokens of January 2025, against a goal of 1,000 times. How it is scored
- Status rule
- Growing when ranked coding apps use more tokens than in the same month a year before.
Most used coding apps
The top five of 2026-10.
- Hermes Agent: 55T.
- Claude Code: 46T.
- Kilo Code: 26T.
- Codex: 15T.
- Cline: 14T.
Update history
The reading on each date we checked, separate from the historical observations above.
| Date | Value | Year over year | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-11-02 | 205T | +3179% | Growing |
| 2026-11-01 | 205T | +3179% | Growing |