Open-weight models now carry 71.5% of Vercel AI Gateway tokens and 23% of spend

Vercel's AI Gateway Production Index for October 2026, published 15 October, says open-weight models now process more than seven in ten gateway tokens and account for nearly one in four dollars, a spend share that has more than quadrupled since June. September gateway spend was about 13 times December's while the average price per token was 47% lower, almost one in three teams changed their most-used lab in September, and nearly 70% of September spend on Chinese models went through US-based providers. Vercel says Jev reached 35% of paid teams in its first two weeks but took just 0.27% of spend, while Opus 5.5 took more than one in ten gateway dollars in its own first two weeks.

What it means This is real production routing data, not a benchmark. Teams are switching labs often and sending most volume to cheaper open models, while frontier models keep a large share of spend.