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October 13, 2025

State of LLMs on the Application Layer

We have analyzed model adoption of 20.000+ organizations building LLM applications and agents in the last 12 months. Here is what we found.

Picture Felix KrauthFelix Krauth

About Langfuse

Langfuse is the leading open source LLM observability platform powering safe and scalable LLM applications for 10s of thousands of organizations. The data on Langfuse Cloud tells a story of a rapidly growing market and allows us to get a unique view on the state of the LLM application layer.

We power global enterprises like Khan Academy, SumUp and Merck as well as AI-native startups like Magic Patterns, Circleback and Juicebox to build safe and scalable LLM applications and agents.

About this Report

The core of what we do is helping developers to ship LLM applications and agents faster and more reliably. Our dataset gives a unique view on how models are adopted on the application layer instead of consumers that use those models via apps like Claude, Gemini or ChatGPT.

  • The data comes from over 20.000 organizations on Langfuse Cloud
  • Billions of LLM traces and observations (see data model) on Langfuse Cloud (no self-hosted data included)
  • 59 unique models tracked across major providers, longtail of models is not included and grouped into “Other”
  • Time Period: 12 months (Oct 2024 - Sep 2025)

Status Quo in September 2025

Here is where the market stands in September 2025: OpenAI is still the dominant player (55.3%), followed by Google (13.1%) and Anthropic (7.3%). The longtail of models is not included and grouped into “Other” (24.3%).

Status Quo in September 2025

Change over the last 12 months

The past 12 months show clear changes in the market.

Status Quo in September 2025

ProviderSep 2025Oct 2024Change
OpenAI55.3%82.7%-27.4 pts
Other24.3%10.0%+14.3 pts
Google13.1%0.5%+12.6 pts
Anthropic7.3%6.8%+0.5 pts

Key Insights

  • OpenAI is yielding market share (down -27.4 points) while Google, Anthropic and “Other” model providers grow.
  • Google’s Rise: Google went from 0.5% → 13.1% (26x) share in just 12 months.
  • Anthropic is relatively stable at 7.3%
  • “Other” models rising strongly signals that the LLM market is fragmenting beyond the “Big Three,” with organizations adopting specialized models, open-source alternatives, and regional providers.

Market Share by Model

Let’s take a look at market shares on model level.

Market Share by Model

What we see

  • The market is operating on a ~6 month effective model lifecycle – Several October 2024 top-20 models effectively disappeared
  • Application builders are heavily relying on small efficient models (OpenAI nano or mini: Gemini Flash; Anthropic’s Opus model not relevant)
  • The story isn’t “OpenAI vs everyone else”—it’s fragmentation vs. consolidation. While the Big Three (OpenAI, Google, Anthropic) consolidate around 75% of tracked share, the “Other” 25% represents hundreds of specialized models serving specific use cases, geographies, or price points.

Key Takeaways:

  • Organizations aren’t building on stable platforms; they’re building on a constantly shifting foundation. This creates both opportunity (rapid innovation) and risk (technical debt accumulates fast).
  • Staying flexible and being ready to swap out models will pay off when building applications and underlying infrastructure.

Top 15 Models - September 2025

  1. GPT-4o mini (OpenAI): 14.2%
  2. GPT-4o (OpenAI): 10.9%
  3. GPT-4.1 (OpenAI): 9.8%
  4. gemini-2.5-flash (Google): 9.4%
  5. GPT-4.1 mini (OpenAI): 8.3%
  6. gemini-2.0-flash (Google): 3.7%
  7. Claude Sonnet 4 (Anthropic): 3.6%
  8. GPT-5 nano (OpenAI): 3.4%
  9. GPT-5 mini (OpenAI): 3.2%
  10. GPT-5 (OpenAI): 1.7%
  11. Claude Sonnet 3.7 (Anthropic): 1.5%
  12. GPT-4.1 nano (OpenAI): 1.0%
  13. o3 (OpenAI): 0.9%
  14. o4-mini (OpenAI): 0.6%
  15. Claude Sonnet 3.5 (Anthropic): 0.6%

Top 15 Models - 12 Month Average

  1. GPT-4o mini (OpenAI): 24.2%
  2. GPT-4o (OpenAI): 16.4%
  3. GPT-4.1 mini (OpenAI): 6.6%
  4. GPT-4.1 (OpenAI): 6.3%
  5. gemini-2.0-flash (Google): 5.3%
  6. gemini-2.5-flash (Google): 4.4%
  7. Claude Sonnet 4 (Anthropic): 2.0%
  8. GPT-4.1 nano (OpenAI): 1.8%
  9. Claude Sonnet 3.7 (Anthropic): 1.8%
  10. Claude Sonnet 3.5 (Anthropic): 1.2%
  11. GPT-5 nano (OpenAI): 1.1%
  12. GPT-5 mini (OpenAI): 0.8%
  13. Claude Haiku 3 (Anthropic): 0.8%
  14. text-embedding-3-large (OpenAI): 0.7%
  15. text-embedding-ada-002 (OpenAI): 0.7%

Data source: Langfuse LLM observability platform
Analysis period: October 2024 - September 2025

Want to reach out to talk about this story? Write us at press@langfuse.com.