If you are starting to follow AI and developer tools, one easy way to fall behind is to read the loudest number and stop there. You see 8.1k stars and assume the money part is already solved. That is how time, attention, and budget get pointed at the wrong signal.
The page worth studying is sponsors / diegosouzapw. OmniRoute showed 8.1k stars, 1.4k forks, and 4,535 commits, so the project was not invisible. But the GitHub Sponsors page showed 1 current sponsor and 1 past sponsor.
That is the whole point: GitHub Sponsors is not a tip jar. It is a product page. On that page, the visible setup was Monthly, One-time, and a custom amount, but no named tiers. GitHub allows up to 10 monthly and 10 one-time plans, plus rewards, a welcome message, and private-repo perks.
So the gap is not simply exposure. The gap is packaging. To judge whether an update matters, do not count features. Ask whether it changes your next decision. In this case, the decision change is simple: stop reading stars as proof that paid support will happen by itself.
This does not mean stars and sponsors should match one for one. The people who star and the people who pay are not always the same group. But if you want a faster read on a project, do not stop at the repo badge. Open the sponsor page, check whether the support offer is clear, and share this with anyone who still reads stars as proof of funding.