OpenRouter: Astra leads spend, Luna leads tokens — OpenAI retakes wallet share after 133 weeks
What's the deal? For the week of 7–13 Sep 2026, OpenRouter users spent more on OpenAI models than on Anthropic models — the first weekly wallet-share crossover since the week of 26 Feb 2024 (~133 weeks), according to OpenRouter head of insights Peter Walker. OpenAI’s new flagship GPT-6 Astra took ~19% of combined OpenAI+Anthropic dollars spent, ahead of Claude Opus 5 (~16%); GPT-5.6 Sol and Luna each took ~10%.
The quirky split: counting dollars crowns Astra; counting tokens crowns cut-price Luna. Astra is listed on OpenRouter at roughly $10 / $50 per million input/output tokens — ~50× Luna’s input price — so a premium model can lead spend without approaching Luna’s volume. Neither ranking measures completed useful work.
- Walker’s charts are OpenRouter traffic only — not either lab’s direct API, ChatGPT/Claude subscription revenue, or market-wide share.
- Astra launched ~4 Sep 2026; the spend lead covers roughly its first full measured week.
- Earlier OpenRouter work showed Luna/Terra token usage exploding during summer discounts (Dealroom note on the 13.8× Luna jump) — context for why volume and wallet rankings now diverge.
Caveats / inference: Launch-week evaluation traffic can inflate Astra’s early wallet share; durable production mix is not yet proven. Wallet share mechanically favours expensive models. Do not read this as OpenAI “winning” the overall API market.
The signal: Inference procurement is bifurcating into premium frontier spend vs commodity high-volume tokens — and the same lab can lead both rankings with two differently priced models.
Sources: Peter Walker — OpenAI retakes #1 wallet share · Peter Walker — wallet vs tokens · RuntimeWire write-up · OpenRouter — GPT-5.6 discounts / Jevons
