Chinese models lead OpenRouter weekly token volume for 24 straight weeks at 4.5x US
OpenRouter data shows last week's global volume at about 172 trillion tokens, of which Chinese models accounted for 86.74 trillion against 18.97 trillion for US models, a 4.5x lead and a 24-week streak, driven mainly by price differences.
Reporting on October 22 citing OpenRouter platform data put last week's global weekly model volume at about 172 trillion tokens, of which Chinese models accounted for 86.74 trillion against 18.97 trillion for US models, a 4.5x lead and the 24th consecutive week on top.
Price is cited as the main driver. Kimi K3 is priced at $3 per million input tokens and $15 output, against Claude Fable 5.1 at $10 input and $50 output, roughly a 3.3x unit cost gap. On average cost per task the spread reaches about 3.8x, and up to 28x for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash.
The figures reflect calls routed through the third-party aggregator OpenRouter and do not equal actual usage on each vendor's own channels. Traffic distribution on a relay platform can differ from that of direct enterprise procurement.