The Model Adoption Report
Regional power shifts, model momentum, provider intelligence, the economics of the top tier, Europe Watch, and the signals to monitor.
Executive summary
Five conclusions, three minutes. What changed across model routing, economics and the European picture in July 2026.
- Asia holds the lead at 60.6% of routed tokens (+6.3 pp over four weeks) - the concentration of demand by region of origin is not easing.
- Z.ai GLM 5 was the month's biggest climber, up 15 places to #29.
- No tracked price cuts landed inside the window this month.
- 3 new model(s) entered the ranking, led by Tencent Hy3 (free).
- Europe remains marginal at 0.51% of routed traffic; the regulatory picture is tracked in Europe Watch below.
Global AI market
Regional share of routed tokens
| Region | Share | 4-week change |
|---|---|---|
| Asia | 60.60% | ▲ +6.26 pp |
| US | 32.67% | ▲ +0.23 pp |
| Other | 6.22% | ▼ -6.52 pp |
| Europe | 0.51% | – +0.03 pp |
Region reflects where each model's developer is headquartered. Four-week change is computed over ranked models.
Top gaining models
- Z.ai GLM 5 #29 +15 places
- Anthropic Claude 5 Fable #24 +8 places
- OpenAI GPT 5.5 #14 +7 places
- Google Gemma 4 31b It #27 +7 places
- Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 #13 +6 places
Top losing models
- Tencent Hy3 Preview #21 -18 places
- DeepSeek V3.2 #23 -13 places
- Google Gemini 3.5 Flash #30 -10 places
- OpenAI GPT 4o Mini #28 -5 places
- Anthropic Claude 4.6 Sonnet #11 -4 places
Demand stayed concentrated in Asia-built models. The month's movement was driven by Z.ai GLM 5 on the way up and price competition at the low end.
Model rankings - top 25
| # | Model / origin | Routed share | 4-week | Reason | Momentum |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tencent Hy3 (free) Asia | 11.66% | – | New entrant | Flat |
| 2 | Xiaomi Mimo V2.5 Asia | 11.30% | ▲ 2 | Holding | Rising |
| 3 | DeepSeek V4 Flash Asia | 9.93% | ▼ 2 | Holding | Falling |
| 4 | MiniMax M3 Asia | 8.09% | ▼ 2 | Holding | Falling |
| 5 | Z.ai GLM 5.2 Asia | 6.07% | ▲ 5 | New entrant | Rising |
| 6 | DeepSeek V4 Pro Asia | 5.37% | ▲ 2 | Holding | Rising |
| 7 | Anthropic Claude 4.7 Opus US | 4.29% | ▼ 1 | Holding | Falling |
| 8 | NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra 550b A55b (free) US | 3.88% | ▲ 4 | Adoption climbing | Rising |
| 9 | Anthropic Claude 4.8 Opus US | 3.86% | – | Holding | Flat |
| 10 | StepFun Step 3.7 Flash Asia | 2.31% | ▲ 3 | Adoption climbing | Rising |
| 11 | Anthropic Claude 4.6 Sonnet US | 1.89% | ▼ 4 | Losing share | Falling |
| 12 | Google Gemini 3 Flash Preview US | 1.78% | ▼ 1 | Holding | Falling |
| 13 | Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 US | 1.75% | ▲ 6 | New entrant | Rising |
| 14 | OpenAI GPT 5.5 US | 1.66% | ▲ 7 | Adoption climbing | Rising |
| 15 | Google Gemini 2.5 Flash US | 1.16% | – | Holding | Flat |
| 16 | Xiaomi Mimo V2.5 Pro Asia | 1.15% | ▲ 2 | Holding | Rising |
| 17 | Google Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite US | 1.07% | ▼ 3 | Losing share | Falling |
| 18 | Poolside Laguna M.1 (free) US | 1.03% | ▼ 2 | Holding | Falling |
| 19 | Google Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite US | 0.96% | ▲ 6 | Adoption climbing | Rising |
| 20 | OpenAI GPT OSS 120b US | 0.96% | ▲ 2 | Holding | Rising |
| 21 | Tencent Hy3 Preview Asia | 0.78% | ▼ 18 | Losing share | Falling |
| 22 | Moonshot Kimi K2.6 Asia | 0.74% | ▲ 2 | Holding | Rising |
| 23 | DeepSeek V3.2 Asia | 0.72% | ▼ 13 | Losing share | Falling |
| 24 | Anthropic Claude 5 Fable US | 0.71% | ▲ 8 | Adoption climbing | Rising |
| 25 | NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super 120b A12b (free) US | 0.69% | ▲ 2 | Holding | Rising |
Reason is derived from the data (new entry, observed price change, or rank movement); it is not an editorial claim.
Provider intelligence
Best move: DeepSeek V4 Pro +2 to #6 · Cheapest: DeepSeek V4 Flash at $0.090/1M in
Best move: Anthropic Claude 5 Fable +8 to #24 · New: Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 · Cheapest: Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 at $2.00/1M in
Best move: Xiaomi Mimo V2.5 +2 to #2 · Cheapest: Xiaomi Mimo V2.5 at $0.10/1M in
New: Tencent Hy3 (free) · Cheapest: Tencent Hy3 (free) at $0.00/1M in
Cheapest: MiniMax M3 at $0.30/1M in
Best move: Google Gemma 4 31b It +7 to #27 · Cheapest: Google Gemma 4 26b A4b It at $0.00/1M in
Best move: Z.ai GLM 5 +15 to #29 · New: Z.ai GLM 5.2 · Cheapest: Z.ai GLM 5 at $0.60/1M in
Best move: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra 550b A55b (free) +4 to #8 · Cheapest: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra 550b A55b (free) at $0.00/1M in
Best move: OpenAI GPT 5.5 +7 to #14 · Cheapest: OpenAI GPT OSS 120b at $0.030/1M in
Best move: StepFun Step 3.7 Flash +3 to #10 · Cheapest: StepFun Step 3.7 Flash at $0.20/1M in
Cheapest: Poolside Laguna M.1 (free) at $0.00/1M in
Best move: Moonshot Kimi K2.6 +2 to #22 · Cheapest: Moonshot Kimi K2.6 at $0.66/1M in
Economics
Best value (cost + adoption)
- Tencent Hy3 (free) · $0.00
- NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra 550b A55b (free) · $0.00
- NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super 120b A12b (free) · $0.00
- Google Gemma 4 26b A4b It · $0.00
- Google Gemma 4 31b It · $0.00
Monthly cost of a standard coding-agent workload; adoption flat-or-rising.
Most expensive, same workload
- Anthropic Claude 5 Fable · $870.00
- OpenAI GPT 5.5 · $485.00
- Anthropic Claude 4.7 Opus · $435.00
- Anthropic Claude 4.8 Opus · $435.00
- Anthropic Claude 4.6 Sonnet · $261.00
The cheapest tracked model runs the standard coding-agent workload for $0.00/month; the most expensive costs $870 - a 87000x spread for comparable work. This month no tracked model cut list price.
Cost per coding task, per agent and per reasoning workload are on each model page's calculator.
Enterprise Watch
- Availability - median provider uptime across tracked models: not available (last 30 days, real).
- Open weights - 15 of the top 25 ship open weights; the rest are proprietary.
- Longest context - OpenAI GPT 5.5 (1050K), Xiaomi Mimo V2.5 (1049K), DeepSeek V4 Flash (1049K).
- Not yet tracked - SLAs, EU data-residency, latency and formal compliance are not in the routed-traffic feed; yellow3 does not estimate them. Flagged for the enterprise data set.
Europe Watch
- Routed share - European-built models hold 0.51% of routed traffic.
- EU AI Act - Edition 02 ยท 13 July 2026: The Digital Omnibus became final: the Parliament adopted it on 16 June, the Council on 29 June, locking in the slide of high-risk obligations to 2027 and 2028. Only Official Journal publication remains. Fines issued stayed at zero.
- Digital Product Passport - public call record 0-1; First call graded: the EU missed its own service-provider deadline. The registry's 19 July test is next.
- Sovereignty - Mistral remains the only European developer in the routed top tier.
Europe Watch draws on yellow3's live EU AI Act and Digital Product Passport instruments.
Emerging models
- New this month - Tencent Hy3 (free), Z.ai GLM 5.2, Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5.
- Open-source momentum - 15 of the top 25 are open-weight, a structural shift toward models teams can self-host.
- Challengers to watch - the fastest climbers were Z.ai GLM 5, Anthropic Claude 5 Fable, OpenAI GPT 5.5.
Forecast
Where yellow3 believes the next month goes. This is analysis, not data - presented for your sign-off before it carries the yellow3 name.
The observed signals point one way: Asia share +6.3 pp over four weeks; Z.ai GLM 5 climbing fast. On that basis, the low-cost, high-context challengers keep taking routed share while premium frontier models hold value in reasoning-heavy and enterprise use. The forward call - and the confidence level - is to be finalised by the yellow3 analyst before publication.
Appendix
Methodology
Adoption is measured from OpenRouter routed-token traffic over trailing windows; region reflects developer headquarters. Pricing and capabilities are pulled from the OpenRouter public model feed and provider uptime. This is developer routing behaviour, not the whole market.
Tracked providers
Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google, MiniMax, Moonshot, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Poolside, StepFun, Tencent, Xiaomi, Z.ai.
Definitions
Routed share = a model's tokens as a percentage of all routed tokens in the window. Standard workload = 1,000 coding-agent tasks/month (100K input, 10K output, 70% cached).
Data
Underlying figures: model-adoption-data.json. CSV exports are a Professional feature.