Just tracking the number of models that appeared on OpenRouter from 63 to 668 between 2023 and 2025 doesn't tell the whole human story behind that growth.
It’s like someone saying the number of available forms at Services Québec went up without mentioning if they are easier to fill out, or if anyone actually knows they exist.
What truly matters is the arc—the real decisions developers made, the practical challenges they faced, and what actually drove them to put those models out there.
If you only count, you miss the actual stakes for the people trying to build something useful with them; it’s just a tally, not a practical guide for real-world application, like knowing a bus route exists but not its schedule.