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Research

OpenAI is overtaking Anthropic across three API spending trackers

OpenAI passed Anthropic in spending on OpenRouter and in Ramp’s billing sample in September, and is closing in on Vercel’s AI Gateway. Model-level data trace the gain to GPT-6 Astra.

by Village Team

For most of the past year, Anthropic took the bigger share of spending on the two labs’ models on all three public trackers we monitor. In September, OpenAI passed it on two and closed in on the third.

Our Village monitor follows OpenRouter’s spending by model, token spending in Ramp’s AI Index, and daily cost shares on Vercel’s AI Gateway, comparing Anthropic only with OpenAI within each.

Three trackers, one direction

Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s shares of their combined spending on OpenRouter, Ramp and Vercel since October 2025. OpenAI passes 50% on OpenRouter in the week of September 7 and on Ramp in the week of September 14; on Vercel, Anthropic’s share falls to 53% on September 21.

  • OpenRouter: Anthropic took 70–82% of spending every week from January through May. OpenAI passed 50% in the week of September 7, its first lead since at least January 2025, and led on nine of the 13 days from September 9 to 21, including the last five.
  • Ramp: Anthropic peaked at 69.8% in March. OpenAI took 51.1% in the week of September 14, its first lead since December.
  • Vercel: Anthropic still had 90% on August 5. On September 21 it fell to 53.0%, its narrowest margin on record.

GPT-6 Astra moved the money

Weekly spending on Anthropic and OpenAI models for the four weeks beginning August 24, 2026. On OpenRouter, Anthropic stays near $6 million while OpenAI rises from $3.3 million to $5.8 million, including $2.5 million on GPT-6 Astra models. On Ramp, OpenAI rises from $9.2 million to $13.7 million, including $5.3 million on Astra.

On OpenRouter, Anthropic’s weekly spending held near $6 million while OpenAI’s rose from $3.3 million to $5.8 million. GPT-6 Astra, which began rolling out September 3, went from zero to $2.5 million a week: essentially all of OpenAI’s growth. Those totals leave out an estimated $2.6 million of Astra spending on September 16 and 17 by a benchmark app from Circuit & Chisel, the company behind Unbiased, as Unbiased launched its Pareto model on OpenRouter. Counting it, OpenAI’s latest week reached $8.4 million.

Ramp tells the same story. Astra’s $5.3 million exceeded OpenAI’s entire increase as spending moved off GPT-5.6 Sol, while Anthropic’s spending fell 30% from its late-July peak.

What to watch

Both leads are narrow. OpenAI took 50.7% of OpenRouter spending in the week of September 7, and the next week was nearly even at 49.6%. On Ramp it holds 51.1% after one week. Our monitor counts a change of leader only after two straight complete weeks, and neither tracker has met that test yet.

How we built this

This study draws on a Village monitor that our agent built from public sources. It collects each tracker every day, keeps the history that their rolling windows discard, and reconstructs OpenRouter’s earlier weeks from archived and published data.

Each tracker covers a different population with its own accounting, so we compare shares within each rather than pooling them, and none measures either lab’s revenue. OpenRouter’s earlier weeks come from its published chart and, for late 2025, estimates; from August 31 we exclude the Unbiased benchmark app. Ramp reflects a connected-billing sample, and Vercel publishes list-price cost shares rather than dollars.

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