# Ramp's Data Shows OpenAI's Token Prices Fell 35% in a Month While Its Share of Business Spend Shrank

Times of AI Desk · 2026-10-28 · Industry

[https://timesof.ai/2026/10/ramp-ai-token-price-index-59-cents-axios](https://timesof.ai/2026/10/ramp-ai-token-price-index-59-cents-axios)

> Ramp's AI Index put the blended price of OpenAI and Anthropic tokens bought by businesses on its platform at $0.59 per million in the week ending October 23, down 24.1% from a month earlier. OpenAI's blended price fell 34.7% to $0.44 and Anthropic's 17.9% to $0.73, yet Anthropic's share of token spend rose to 60.5% from 51.3% while OpenAI's fell to 35.1%. Token volume rose 37.1% and spending 8.9%. Axios, which reported the index alongside GPT-6.1 Terra's launch, says the price is about 35% below the end of June. The data covers a subset of Ramp customers.

If OpenAI's price cuts were meant to win business spending, Ramp's latest data does not show it working yet. On Ramp's platform, the blended price businesses paid for OpenAI tokens fell 34.7% in a month, to $0.44 per million, yet OpenAI's share of token spending fell from 44.2% to 35.1%. Anthropic, whose blended price fell less, by 17.9% to $0.73, took 60.5% of spending, up from 51.3%.

## The numbers

Ramp's AI Index puts the blended price per million tokens across OpenAI and Anthropic at $0.59 in the week ending October 23, 2026, against $0.77 in the week ending September 25, a 24.1% drop. Over the same comparison, total token volume rose 37.1% and total token spending rose 8.9%. By volume rather than spend, Anthropic's share rose to 59.8% from 56.1% and OpenAI's fell to 37.2% from 40.2%.

Axios reported the index on Wednesday alongside OpenAI's launch of [GPT-6.1 Terra](https://timesof.ai/2026/10/openai-gpt-6-1-terra-launch-pricing-system-card), which OpenAI prices at $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens. Axios said the index was about 59 cents per million tokens on October 23, roughly 35% below its level at the end of June, and that recent Ramp figures suggest spending growth may be flattening.

## What Ramp says is driving it

In an October 13 newsletter, Ramp economist Ara Kharazian said: "This decline in spend is driven almost exclusively by competition between OpenAI and Anthropic," noting that open-source models make up less than 5% of business spend on Ramp. The same newsletter said businesses are changing AI model providers more than ever.

A blended price falls when list prices drop but also when customers shift toward cheaper models or cached tokens, and Ramp's page does not separate those effects. The month-on-month figures alone cannot say which one is at work.

## Limits

- The token figures come from businesses using Ramp's Token Spend Management product, which Ramp says "is not representative of Ramp's total AI spend volume, though results are directionally similar."
- The comparison is one week against the same week a month earlier, so it can swing with a single large customer or launch.
- Axios's "roughly 35% since the end of June" figure is not shown on Ramp's public index page, which gives only the month-on-month comparison; we could not check it.

## Sources

- [Ramp Economics Lab: Ramp AI Index (data through September 2026; Tokenomics for the week ending October 23, 2026)](https://ramp.com/data/ai-index)
- [Ramp Leading Indicators: Token pricing power falls ahead of anticipated mega-AIPOs (October 13, 2026)](https://ramp.com/leading-indicators/ais-pricing-power-problem)
- [Axios: OpenAI's new model cuts prices again (October 28, 2026)](https://www.axios.com/2026/10/28/ai-open-ai-token-prices)
- [Times of AI: OpenAI Prices GPT-6.1 Terra at $1 and $5 per Million Tokens (October 27, 2026)](https://timesof.ai/2026/10/openai-gpt-6-1-terra-launch-pricing-system-card)