Who holds the most listed routes?
The short answer
A handful of operators. A few operators, on a few hostnames between them, hold a substantial share of every listed route.
As published in the issue
Three operators — Orthogonal, delx, m2mcent — hold 2,979 of 16,197 listed routes (18.4%) on four hostnames between them.
(1) The CATALOGUE population: every route listed on the two public route catalogues, combined and de-duplicated, at one stamped read on 2026-09-01 — the read the issue's route, host and service counts are quoted against, with a second complete read 93 minutes later kept as the cross-check.
The sentence above is quoted from a published issue and is not re-written here. Its date, its population and the record behind it are below.
Why it matters
Route counts are often read as diversity. When a few operators hold a large share of the listings, catalogue breadth overstates how many independent parties are actually offering machine-payable services.
What we measured
We grouped every route in the catalogue population on the stated September read by the operator behind its hostname, and ranked operators by the routes they hold.
What the evidence shows
- Sealed days behind the archive figures
- 11
- Observations in that window
- 29,022
- Issue
- Machine Commerce Reality Index: #001 — August 2026
- Published
11 days
2026-08-21 · 2026-08-22 · 2026-08-23 · 2026-08-24 · 2026-08-25 · 2026-08-26 · 2026-08-27 · 2026-08-28 · 2026-08-29 · 2026-08-30 · 2026-08-31
All 11 days behind these figures (21–31 Aug 2026) are sealed, each with its published hash on the Integrity page; each date opens that day's manifest.
Method and reproduction
The runs behind the figures, the record each one produced, and the terms this question uses.
What ran, when, and the record it produced.
| What ran | When | Record hash |
|---|---|---|
| One fresh full read of both public route catalogues, combined and de-duplicated: route shares by operator, settlement routing attributed from published payment challenges against a re-fetched public registry, and the count of listed routes that publish no usable request example. | b34ac16e2eba36d319f1423b2b2c348d8b4d2ad022c12e2eae6e9a41e3ce53c5 |
The terms
The terms this question uses are defined in the glossary.
Corrections and disputes
This answer names a party we measure. The route to dispute a reading is on the corrections page.
Corrections to this issue are on the corrections register, and this answer reads from the record rather than from a copy.