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State of AI: An Empirical 100T Token Study with OpenRouter

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Re: State of AI: An Empirical 100T Token Study with OpenRouter

#21

Post by bakugo »

syspec wrote: post #8

According to the report, 52% of all open-source AI is used for *roleplaying*. They attribute it to fewer content filters and higher creativity. I'm pretty surprised by that, but I guess that also selects for people who would use openrouter

> I guess that also selects for people who would use openrouter

It definitely does. OpenRouter is pretty popular among roleplayers and creative writers due to having a wide variety of models available, sometimes providing free access to quality models such as DeepSeek, and lacking any sort of rules against generating "adult" content.

Re: State of AI: An Empirical 100T Token Study with OpenRouter

#22

Post by bakugo »

djfergus wrote: post #18
raincole wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you rely on AI to write most of your code (instead of using it like Stackoverflow), Claude Code/OpenAI Codex subscription are cheaper than buying tokens. So those users are not on openrouter.

I'm curious what percentage of claude/codex users this is true for - I assumed their business models rely on this not being true for the majority.

Both Claude Code and Codex steer you towards the monthly subscription. Last time I tried Codex, I remember several aspects of it being straight up broken if used with an API key instead of a subscription account.

The business model is likely built upon the assumption that most people aren't going to max out their limits every day, because if they were, it likely wouldn't be profitable.

Re: State of AI: An Empirical 100T Token Study with OpenRouter

#23

Post by majdalsado »

Very interesting how Singapore ranks 2nd in terms of token volume. I wonder if this is potentially Chinese usage via VPN, or if Singaporean consumers and firms are dominating in AI adoption.

Also interesting how the 'roleplaying' category is so dominant, makes me wonder if Google's classifier sees a system prompt with "Act as a X" and classifies that as roleplay vs the specific industry the roleplay was intended to serve.

Re: State of AI: An Empirical 100T Token Study with OpenRouter

#24

Post by reeeli »

themanmaran wrote: post #6
reeeli wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm out of time but "reasoning input tokens" from fortune 5000 engineers sounds like a lobotomized LSD dream, would you care on elaborating how you distinguish between reasoning and non-reasoning? vs "question on duty"?

"reasoning" models like GPT 5 et al do a pre-generation step where they: - Take in the user query (input tokens) - Break that into a game plan. Ex: "Based on user query: {query} generate a plan of action." (reasoning tokens) - Answer (output tokens) Because the reasoning step runs in a loop until it's run through it's action plan, it frequently uses way more tokens than the input/output step.

that was useful, thank you.

I have sooo many issues with the naming scheme of this """""AI"""" industry", it's crazy!

So the LLM gets a prompt, then creates a scheme to pull pre-weighted tokens post-user-phrasing, the constituents of which (the scheme) are called reasoning tokens, which it only explicitly distinguishes as such because there are hundreds or even thousands of output tokens to the hundreds and/or thousands of potential reasoning input tokens that were (almost) equal to the actually chosen reasoning input tokens based on the more or less adequately phrased question/prompt given ... as input ... by the user ...

Re: State of AI: An Empirical 100T Token Study with OpenRouter

#25

Post by m0rde »

> The noticeable spike [~20 percentage points] in May in the figure above [tool invocations] was largely attributable to one sizable account whose activity briefly lifted overall volumes.

The fact that one account can have such a noticeable effect on token usage is kind of insane. And also raises the question of how much token usage is coming from just one or five or ten sizeable accounts.

Re: State of AI: An Empirical 100T Token Study with OpenRouter

#27

Post by bakugo »

asadm wrote: post #10

Who is using grok code and why?

Kilo Code lets people use Grok Code Fast 1 for free, using OpenRouter as the provider. And Grok 4.1 Fast was completely free directly on OpenRouter for some time after its release.

So yeah, their statistics are inflated quite a bit, since most of that usage was not paid for, or at least not by the end user.

Re: State of AI: An Empirical 100T Token Study with OpenRouter

#28

Post by DIAexitNode »

maikakz wrote: post #7
typs wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they’re just classifying all models into “reasoning models” eg o3 vs “non reasoning models” eg 4o and just doing a comparison of total tokens (input tokens + hidden reasoning output tokens + shown output tokens)

that's exactly right!

hell yeah, 109 out of 10 doors opened! 99 bonus doors! what are you talking about, man?

Re: State of AI: An Empirical 100T Token Study with OpenRouter

#29

Post by meander_water »

Overall really interesting read, but I'm having trouble processing this:

> OpenRouter performs internal categorization on a random sample comprising approximately 0.25% of all prompts

How can you arrive at any conclusion with such a small random sample size?

Re: State of AI: An Empirical 100T Token Study with OpenRouter

#30

Post by jfrbfbreudh »

meander_water wrote: post #29

Overall really interesting read, but I'm having trouble processing this: > OpenRouter performs internal categorization on a random sample comprising approximately 0.25% of all prompts How can you arrive at any conclusion with such a small random sample size?

with enough samples
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