OpenRouter token consumption spikes 25,000% since Jan 2025, fueled by AI model inefficiencies
openrouter's weekly token consumption surged from 0.5 trillion to 126.2 trillion tokens since january 2025, driven by inefficient ai models, not necessarily actual usage growth.
openrouter, a platform for developers to integrate ai models, saw its weekly token consumption skyrocket 25,000% since january 2025, from 0.5 trillion to 126.2 trillion tokens. this dramatic increase is attributed to the inefficiencies of ai models, particularly unoptimized agentic systems that consume tokens at staggering rates. openai's gpt 5.6 luna recently dominated token consumption on openrouter, while astra leads in revenue. chinese models like kimi, glm, and deepseek are also growing rapidly, with monthly spending increasing tenfold in 2026.