Chinese AI models regularly pass 30 percent on OpenRouter as cost gap widens

Chinese AI models from DeepSeek and Z.ai now account for over 30% of traffic on OpenRouter, up from 11% last year, as their costs run 60-90% cheaper than US rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic. The startup Lindy saved millions by switching from Anthropic's Claude to DeepSeek. Analysts estimate Chinese models trail US leaders by six to nine months.

Chinese AI models regularly pass 30 percent on OpenRouter as cost gap widens Chinese AI models are gaining ground with US companies because they cost far less than systems from OpenAI and Anthropic, CNBC reports. Models from companies like DeepSeek and Z.ai are seen as competitive, even as per-token pricing from US providers keeps climbing. On the platform OpenRouter, Chinese models have accounted for over 30 percent of traffic every week since February 8, hitting 46 percent at times. Last year, the average was just 11 percent. According to OpenRouter employee Justin Summerville, Chinese open-source models run 60 to 90 percent cheaper. The startup Lindy shifted all of its traffic from Anthropic's Claude to DeepSeek. CEO Flo Crivello said the switch saves millions. Kyle Chan at the Brookings Institution puts the gap between Chinese and US models at six to nine months. That lines up with an estimate from the Center for AI Standards and Innovation CAISI . The agency published a report https://the-decoder.com/china-is-falling-behind-in-the-ai-race-according-to-a-us-government-benchmark/ in May finding that Chinese AI models trail leading US models by about eight months. The assessment covered cybersecurity, software development, math, science, and abstract reasoning. AI News Without the Hype – Curated by Humans Subscribe to THE DECODER for ad-free reading, a weekly AI newsletter, our exclusive "AI Radar" frontier report six times a year, full archive access, and access to our comment section. Subscribe now CNBC https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/07/chinese-ai-models-costs-us-openai-anthropic.html