OpenAI and Anthropic face cooling developer traffic as models get smarter

The AI labs keep shipping smarter models. Developers, increasingly, are not rushing to keep up. OpenAI and Anthropic continue to push out new releases, with GPT-6 variants and further Claude iterations planned through mid-2026. Yet a cluster of engagement metrics points to developer growth that is either flattening or migrating toward cheaper options and internal tools. What the numbers show Start with SDK downloads, the software kits developers install to plug a model into their own apps. OpenAI’s SDK is pulling in approximately 85.8 million downloads a month, according to 2026 data. Anthropic’s sits at 72.7 million. Coding agents are where Anthropic has built its strongest position. Claude Code accounts for roughly 81% of public coding-agent commits on GitHub. For comparison, OpenAI Codex has logged about 5.1 million pull requests over its lifetime. Growth for Claude Code has recently slowed to single digits in annual recurring revenue, the metric software companies use to measure predictable yearly income. Documentation traffic and the spending squeeze AI assistant traffic to documentation sites held at about 39% between July and October 2026. Underneath that steady figure, the ...