Chinese models increase from 6-13% to 57-67% of tokens consumed on OpenRouter in seven months

On the platforms that direct companies' requests to different suppliers, models from China have become the majority — enough to worry Washington.

The switch is clean and fast. On OpenRouter, a gateway that allows developers to query models from competing providers through a single interface, models of Chinese origin accounted for between 6 and 13% of the tokens processed in February 2026. For the week of September 14, this share was between 57 and 67%.

The movement is not isolated to a single platform: at Vercel, the share of Chinese models rose from 11% in January to 55% in August. On American companies alone, the weekly measurement reaches up to 46% of routed tokens depending on the week.

This growth, driven in particular by the open families published by Chinese laboratories and by significantly lower prices, is now attracting the attention of the US Congress, where several committees are looking into the reasons for this adoption. The fact remains that the volume of tokens is not to be confused with turnover: the cheapest models mechanically weigh more heavily in this type of count.