Survey Says: You'll swap the model, but everything you build around it is staying put

Summary

A Stacklok survey of 520 technical leaders at North American enterprises running LLMs or agents found that only 8% use a single model provider, while 25% use five or more. The hardest elements to migrate are integrations to internal systems or MCP servers (53%) and multi-step agent workflows (52%). Although 84% say avoiding lock-in is important, “ability to switch model providers without rebuilding” ranked sixth out of eight criteria, and “avoiding dependence on a single vendor” ranked last. Organizations using five or more model providers are more likely to build integrations (76% vs 42%), use open source agent frameworks (45% vs 22%), and prioritize portability (67% vs 47%). The survey also found that 80% would evaluate an open alternative to closed frontier architectures, and 88% expect to take more control of their AI architecture as they gain experience.

Takeaways

1. 1

   Only 8% of enterprises use a single model provider; 25% use five or more, showing a multi-model landscape where model-level lock-in is already solved.

2. 2

   The hardest elements to migrate are integrations to internal systems or MCP servers (53%) and multi-step agent workflows (52%), not the models themselves.

3. 3

   Organizations using five or more model providers are more likely to build integrations (76% vs 42%), use open source agent frameworks (45% vs 22%), and prioritize portability (67% vs 47%).

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