AI token usage
Is AI use still growing?
Contributes to: Is it being used to build?. Signal score: 85 / 100. Relative weight within this question: 1.
StatusGrowing
Latest value787T
Year over year+3423%
Distance from highAt its high
Caution
This covers one service, not all AI. Part of this growth is OpenRouter itself becoming popular, and big companies mostly buy from AI labs directly.
Tokens are not all software work, and cheap or free models can raise the count without much more being built. Newer models also use more tokens for the same task.
Observed trend
Tokens used through OpenRouter per month, in trillions.
Tokens used through OpenRouter per month, in trillions. · 2025-01 – 2026-10
View data table
| Period / observation | Tokens used through OpenRouter per month, in trillions. |
|---|---|
| 2025-01 | 2 |
| 2025-02 | 3 |
| 2025-03 | 6 |
| 2025-04 | 8 |
| 2025-05 | 10 |
| 2025-06 | 9 |
| 2025-07 | 11 |
| 2025-08 | 15 |
| 2025-09 | 21 |
| 2025-10 | 22 |
| 2025-11 | 27 |
| 2025-12 | 26 |
| 2026-01 | 32 |
| 2026-02 | 50 |
| 2026-03 | 84 |
| 2026-04 | 97 |
| 2026-05 | 123 |
| 2026-06 | 188 |
| 2026-07 | 248 |
| 2026-08 | 379 |
| 2026-09 | 576 |
| 2026-10 | 787 |
What it measures
- Metric
- Tokens used through OpenRouter, latest full month
- Solved if
- AI handles a large share of software work
- Signal score
- 85 / 100. 353 times the tokens of January 2025, against a goal of 1,000 times. How it is scored
- Status rule
- Growing when more tokens are used than in the same month a year before.
Most used models
No single model dominates. These are the top five of 2026-10.
- deepseek/deepseek-v4.1-flash: 119T, 15% of all tokens.
- deepseek/deepseek-v4.1-flash: 79T, 10% of all tokens.
- z-ai/glm-5.3-flash: 57T, 7% of all tokens.
- tencent/hy4-preview: 36T, 5% of all tokens.
- xiaomi/mimo-v2.6-flash: 35T, 5% of all tokens.
Update history
The reading on each date we checked, separate from the historical observations above.
| Date | Value | Year over year | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-11-02 | 787T | +3423% | Growing |
| 2026-11-01 | 787T | +3423% | Growing |
Source
| Source | Role | Measures | Latest data |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenRouter | Scored measurement | Tokens used per AI model, by month | 2026-10 |