TL;DR: API gateways — one interface in front of hundreds of models — had a rare year of counter-trend growth: traffic up 69% while AI websites overall declined. But the breakdown is counter-intuitive: 74 new entrants arrived in twelve months, and leader OpenRouter's share rose from 37.4% to 49.3% rather than being diluted. The newcomers split the long tail; none of them touched the head.
Reporting month 2026-07 · MoM = July vs June · 190 products · Data: AlphaMoat.AI
01
A counter-trend year: the market fell, this track grew 69%
But the growth splits in two — half from incumbents growing, half carried in by new entrants.
Monthly visits: incumbents vs new entrants (Jul 2025 – Jul 2026)
Stacked bars = total monthly visits for the track
Incumbents (the 40 on the chart in Jul 2025)New entrants
J
A
S
O
N
D
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
2025
2026
Source: AlphaMoat.AI
Takeaway: the track went from 23.0M monthly visits in Jul 2025 to 39.0M in Jul 2026 — +69.1% — with the latest month up +7.8% MoM against −1.4% for AI websites overall. Split it, though: the 40 products already on the chart in Jul 2025 reached only 30.6M (+32.7%, and 5 of them have since vanished). The remaining 8.4M — 21.6% of the track today — comes entirely from the 79 products that arrived later. Nearly half the growth is more supply, not more demand. The inflection is clear: from Feb 2026, new entrants go from near-zero to material.
02
The paradox: the field nearly tripled, yet the leader gained 12 points
A flood of entrants usually dilutes the leader. It did not happen here.
Products on the chart × OpenRouter traffic share
Bars = products with traffic that month (left axis) · Line = OpenRouter share of track traffic (right axis)
Products on the chartOpenRouter traffic share
Source: AlphaMoat.AI
Takeaway: products on the chart went from 40 to 114 (peaking at 130), while OpenRouter's share climbed from 37.4% to 49.3% — one product now takes nearly half the track. The top 3 hold 63.3%, the top 10 80.3%. The newcomers are simply not competing for the same users: the leader owns the default-choice position, while entrants pick up price-sensitive, make-do demand at the edges. The implication for founders is blunt — shipping one of these is easy, but what you get afterwards is long-tail traffic, not market share. The only challenger genuinely taking share is Siliconflow, from 8.0% to 9.8% and +87.3% in a single month — built on owning inference capacity rather than just forwarding requests.
03
Demand is concentrated in China: 4.8x its share of the wider market
On the same ruler, this track's country mix looks nothing like AI websites overall.
Visits by country: this track vs all AI websites
July 2026 · share of each group's total visits
This trackAll AI websites
China
19.3%
4.0%
United States
14.2%
19.4%
India
8.7%
7.7%
Germany
2.5%
1.8%
Source: AlphaMoat.AI
Takeaway: China contributes 19.3% of this track's visits — its largest source — against just 4.0% of all AI websites, an 4.8x overweight. The US runs the other way: 14.2% here versus 19.4% overall. That gap is the defining feature of the business: a large part of a gateway's value comes from solving access and payment availability, not merely from unifying an interface. Russia (2.7%) is similarly overweight. For investors, the implication is that revenue here is tied to the policy environment far more than to any technical moat.
04
Three conclusions
For founders and investors looking at this space.
1. The track is growing, but the opportunity is not. Of that +69%, 21.6% was carried in by new supply; incumbent demand grew only 32.7% while the number of players nearly tripled. Share per player is thinning fast.
2. The head effect is stronger than expected, and still strengthening. 74 entrants arrived and the leader gained 12 points. The one player taking real share, Siliconflow, owns inference capacity — it is not another forwarding layer. Pure relay has no moat, and the data says so plainly. So when you assess a company here, the first question is not how good the product is — it is why anyone would switch away from OpenRouter.
3. The real variable is policy, not technology. China's 4.8x overweight says much of this business is selling availability. That is both the source of its growth and its largest exposure — anyone can build the technology; whether they can keep operating depends on something else.
2. The head effect is stronger than expected, and still strengthening. 74 entrants arrived and the leader gained 12 points. The one player taking real share, Siliconflow, owns inference capacity — it is not another forwarding layer. Pure relay has no moat, and the data says so plainly. So when you assess a company here, the first question is not how good the product is — it is why anyone would switch away from OpenRouter.
3. The real variable is policy, not technology. China's 4.8x overweight says much of this business is selling availability. That is both the source of its growth and its largest exposure — anyone can build the technology; whether they can keep operating depends on something else.
05
Appendix: the full Top 50
Ranked by July 2026 monthly visits. Product names link to their AlphaMoat pages.
| # | Product | Company | Monthly visits | MoM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  OpenRouteropenrouter.ai | OpenRouter | 19.20M | +11.3% |
| 2 |  Siliconflowsiliconflow.cn | SiliconFlow | 3.83M | +87.3% |
| 3 |  Kiekie.ai | Kie | 1.63M | +10.2% |
| 4 |  BLACKBOx AIblackbox.ai | BlackBox | 1.61M | -32.0% |
| 5 |  Agnes AIagnes-ai.com | Agnes AI | 1.55M | -22.6% |
| 6 |  ZenMuxzenmux.ai | Zenmux | 1.47M | +107.5% |
| 7 |  liteLLMlitellm.ai | Berrie AI | 634.9K | -0.6% |
| 8 |  PackyAPIpackyapi.com | PackyAPI | 533.9K | -28.4% |
| 9 |  RiftAIriftai.su | RiftAI | 404.9K | +55.4% |
| 10 |  Muapimuapi.ai | Vadoo | 403.6K | +12.7% |
| 11 |  TrueFoundry AI Gatewaytruefoundry.com | Truefoundry | 347.5K | +13.4% |
| 12 |  Nexosnexos.ai | Nexos | 333.8K | -38.4% |
| 13 |  Pollinationspollinations.ai | pollinations.ai | 324.4K | -1.2% |
| 14 |  Kongkonghq.com | Kong | 316.5K | -2.5% |
| 15 |  Runwarerunware.ai | Runware | 315.7K | +11.3% |
| 16 |  Novita AInovita.ai | Novita AI | 310.9K | -1.5% |
| 17 |  Right Coderight.codes | Right Code | 301.9K | -33.0% |
| 18 |  EvoLinkevolink.ai | EvoLink | 295.8K | -1.3% |
| 19 |  CometAPIcometapi.com | CometAPI | 275.2K | -11.1% |
| 20 |  Portkeyportkey.ai | Portkey | 266.1K | +8.0% |
| 21 |  APIMartapimart.ai | APIMart | 265.3K | -5.6% |
| 22 |  AIMLAPIaimlapi.com | AI/ML | 248.7K | -0.4% |
| 23 |  Neco Apiapi.sbbbbbbbbb.xyz | Neco Api | 229.1K | +255.1% |
| 24 |  OfoxAIofox.ai | Nice Talk | 205.0K | +8.8% |
| 25 |  ModelsLabmodelslab.com | ModelsLab | 185.5K | -14.8% |
| 26 |  AIHubMixaihubmix.com | AIHubMix | 163.8K | -8.6% |
| 27 |  Gemaiapi.gemai.cc | Gemai | 162.3K | -19.7% |
| 28 |  Centosai.centos.hk | Centos | 161.9K | +6.7% |
| 29 |  LLM Gatewayllmgateway.io | LLM Gateway | 161.3K | +40.9% |
| 30 |  EdenAIedenai.co | Eden AI | 158.5K | +2.6% |
| 31 |  each::labseachlabs.ai | Eachlabs | 152.8K | +13.5% |
| 32 |  InsForeinsforge.dev | InsForge | 149.4K | -6.1% |
| 33 |  Pioneer AIpioneer.ai | Pioneer AI | 146.9K | -39.8% |
| 34 |  PoYo.aipoyo.ai | PoYo API | 138.6K | +34.6% |
| 35 |  Vector Engineapi.vectorengine.ai | Vector Engine | 137.8K | -27.0% |
| 36 |  Heliconehelicone.ai | Helicone | 103.0K | -6.2% |
| 37 |  Flaq AIflaq.ai | Flaq AI | 97.1K | +33.1% |
| 38 |  Duckcodingduckcoding.ai | Duckcoding | 87.2K | -57.3% |
| 39 |  MegaLLMmegallm.io | MegaLLM | 84.3K | -2.3% |
| 40 |  Ikuncodeapi.ikuncode.cc | Ikuncode | 84.1K | -47.3% |
| 41 |  Superapisuperapi.buzz | Superapi | 81.7K | -15.7% |
| 42 |  Chat01chat01.ai | chat01.ai | 81.1K | -13.2% |
| 43 |  OrcaRouterorcarouter.ai | OrcaRouter | 80.8K | +22.8% |
| 44 |  302.AI302.ai | 302.AI | 76.9K | -13.9% |
| 45 |  UnoRouterunorouter.com | UnoRouter | 74.3K | +538.8% |
| 46 |  AIsaaisa.one | AIsa | 71.9K | +158.6% |
| 47 |  Respanrespan.ai | Keywords AI | 69.2K | -3.7% |
| 48 |  API Marketapipass.dev | ApiPass | 57.8K | +53.3% |
| 49 |  Linkapilinkapi.ai | Linkapi | 55.4K | -71.8% |
| 50 |  Nanobananaapinanobananaapi.ai | Nano Banana | 55.1K | +8.9% |
How to read this: the striking thing is not the top spot but the volatility. In one month UnoRouter rose +538.8%, Neco Api +255.1% and AIsa +158.6%, while Linkapi fell −71.8%, Duckcoding −57.3% and Ikuncode −47.3%. Healthy infrastructure markets do not behave this way — switching gateways costs a user almost nothing beyond changing a base URL. Rankings below the head are therefore close to meaningless and will reshuffle next month; only the top ten are stable. One more signal: domains like riftai.su, api.sbbbbbbbbb.xyz and superapi.buzz appear on the list, suggesting a meaningful share of supply sits in a grey zone — worth extra diligence before you buy.
Data & Methodology
The sample is the 190 products tagged "API Proxy / Model Gateway" in the AlphaMoat catalog; the reporting month is July 2026 and MoM compares July with June. Multiple domains belonging to one product are merged and counted once, with visits summed across domains. Website visits are AlphaMoat estimates based on third-party data and do not equal registered users, MAU, API call volume or revenue — especially for this category, where most real usage happens at the API endpoint and never touches the website. "No traffic record" means the domain has not entered AlphaMoat's exact-match traffic library, not that the product has no users. "Incumbents" are the 40 products with traffic records in July 2025; "new entrants" are the 79 that first appeared afterwards; the two together make up each month's total. Country shares are recomputed by summing per-country visits across the sample. The comparison baseline is all visible AI websites in the AlphaMoat catalog over the same period on the same basis.