Open-weight models take 56% of token volume, Astra doubles Fable 5.1 spend

AI Gateway’s September 2026 Production Index, based on anonymized traffic through August, reports that open-weight models accounted for a majority of token volume for the first time, rising from 7% in December 2025 to 56% in August while representing 14% of spending. This shift, alongside broader model-price reductions, contributed to a 23.2% decline in average token prices in August, with the median high-volume team paying 7.6% less per token. Anthropic retained 64% of gateway spending despite Fable 5 losing substantial share after the less expensive Opus 5 launched, as many customers shifted within Anthropic’s portfolio rather than changing providers. Google’s Gemini 3 Flash saw its token share decline sharply, with much of its displaced volume moving to competing providers’ cheaper or higher-capability models. In early September, OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra quickly captured a major portion of OpenAI spending and exceeded Anthropic’s similarly priced Fable 5.1 in early adoption and gateway spend. The report also notes changes in multimedia generation, including Google’s Nano Banana leading image spending, Seedance maintaining leadership in video generation and spending, and declining share for xAI’s Grok Imagine.

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