OpenRouter, a leading LLM aggregator, tracks the rapid growth of available models and intelligence metrics.
Between April 2023 and October 2025, OpenRouter and Artificial Analysis documented significant increases in both open-source and closed-source models.
The number of models available on OpenRouter expanded from 63 in early 2024 to 668 by December 2025.
This data informs OpenRouter's daily research dataset, providing insights into the evolving LLM market.
OpenRouter offers a standardized API for accessing hundreds of models from various providers.
Examples
- The cumulative number of models available on OpenRouter grew substantially.
- Both open-source and closed-source models saw rapid increases in availability.
- The number of inference providers also showed significant cumulative growth.
- The intelligence index of newly released models demonstrated an upward trend.
- OpenRouter immediately integrates new models upon their release by creators.
The 63 to 668 model expansion on OpenRouter by December 2025 is a massive 10-fold increase, but simply tracking growth doesn't cause it.
That's like saying a speedometer makes the car go faster; it's a measurement tool, not the engine itself.
We need to factor in other drivers, such as developer release rates—how many models are actually being created—and OpenRouter's onboarding efficiency, which could account for a significant percentage of the growth.
Attributing this expansion solely to tracking data gives it a much higher importance score than it likely deserves, perhaps 80% when it might be closer to 25% if we consider all variables.
For instance, if OpenRouter streamlined their integration process, that change alone could boost model availability by 200% regardless of how well it's tracked.