Burntop
Free open-source AI usage tracking & analytics for developers
Burntop delivers exactly what it promises: a free, lightweight AI usage tracker. The CLI sync is straightforward, and the community leaderboard adds fun social accountability. However, it lacks alerts, SSO, and on-prem deployment, so it's not suited for enterprises or teams needing admin controls. If you're an individual developer or a small team wanting no-cost visibility into your AI spending, Burntop is a solid choice. For deeper production observability, consider LangSmith or Vercel AI SDK.
Verified 1d ago · liveness 61/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/burntop
- Individual developers tracking personal AI usage across multiple tools
- Teams optimizing AI spending with detailed analytics
- Open-source contributors wanting to share stats via badges or social media
- AI enthusiasts exploring usage patterns and community trends
- Enterprise users needing SSO, role-based access, or admin controls
- Users looking for billing, chargeback, or invoice generation features
- Non-technical users uncomfortable with CLI installation or command-line interfaces
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Skip Burntop if you need enterprise-grade observability with SSO, alerts, on-prem deployment, or if you're non-technical and uncomfortable with CLI-based setup.
Burntop is free forever, with no credit card required, making it ideal for individual developers and small teams who want AI usage tracking without cost. It competes with paid tools like LangSmith, which offers more extensive observability but at a price; for basic tracking, Burntop is the budget-friendly choice.
In short
Burntop — Free open-source AI usage tracking & analytics for developers. Best for Individual developers tracking personal AI usage across multiple tools, Teams optimizing AI spending with detailed analytics, Open-source contributors wanting to share stats via badges or social media. Free to use.
What people actually say about Burntop — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
26 mentions across 1 source (YouTube) · researched Jul 28, 2026.
- +Free forever, no credit card required.
- +Open-source under MIT license, customizable.
- +Real-time dashboard tracks tokens, costs, usage.
- +CLI syncs data with a single command.
- +Supports 10+ AI tools including Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT.
- −No community feedback to validate features.
- −Limited integrations despite claim of 10+.
- −No support for enterprise-scale needs.
- −Unknown data privacy practices.
- −Potential tracking inaccuracies without user validation.
- • Potential cost of self-hosting if self-deployed
- • Time investment for setup and maintenance
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is Burntop? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: September 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Real-time token tracking
- Cost tracking
- Usage patterns visualization
- Community leaderboard
- Filter leaderboard by tool, model, time period
- Shareable OG images
- Embeddable badges for GitHub README
- Yearly Wrapped
- Streak tracking
- CLI sync (bunx burntop sync)
- Support for 10+ AI tools
- Open-source under MIT
- No credit card required
- Detailed model-level analytics
About Burntop
Burntop is a free, open-source analytics tool that helps you track and analyze AI API usage across Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, and 10+ other tools. It provides a real-time dashboard for monitoring tokens, costs, and usage patterns. You can sync your usage via a single CLI command (`bunx burntop sync`) and instantly see visualizations of your AI workflow. Key features include a community leaderboard with filters by tool, model, or time period, shareable OG images for social media, embeddable badges for GitHub READMEs, a yearly wrapped summary, streak tracking, and detailed model-level analytics. Unlike many analytics platforms, Burntop is entirely free forever with no credit card required. It's open-source under MIT, allowing community contributions and customization. Designed for individual developers and small teams, it offers transparency into AI spending without the complexity or cost of enterprise observability tools.
Behind the Verdict
Burntop stands out as a genuinely free, open-source tool for developers who want to understand their AI usage without paying for expensive analytics platforms. The setup is a single command (`bunx burntop sync`), which makes onboarding nearly instant. The real-time dashboard gives you token counts, cost estimates, and usage trends at a glance. The community leaderboard is a nice social motivator—you can see how your usage compares to hundreds of other developers and filter by tool, model, or time period. Shareable OG images and embeddable badges are perfect for showcasing your workflow on GitHub or social media. The yearly wrapped feature is a fun retrospective review of your AI habits. However, Burntop is not a full observability platform. It lacks alerts, SSO, role-based access, and on-prem deployment options. The CLI is the primary sync method, which may be a barrier for non-technical users. There's no billing or invoice generation, and support is community-driven. If you need enterprise-grade controls, look elsewhere. But for individual developers and small teams who want clear, free insights into their AI spending, Burntop is an excellent choice—especially given the MIT license that lets you customize it to your needs.
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Burntop actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
You want to see how many tokens you use daily across Claude and Cursor and how much it costs.
Outcome: Run `bunx burntop sync` once, then view your dashboard with token counts, cost estimates, and usage trends for the past week.
You want to showcase your AI usage activity on your GitHub profile.
Outcome: Sync your usage and embed a badge in your README; the badge updates with your latest stats, visible to anyone.
You want to see how your AI usage compares with other developers.
Outcome: After syncing, you appear on the community leaderboard, filter by tool or model, and see your rank and streaks.
Use Cases
- Track daily token consumption across Claude and Cursor to identify cost trends.
- Share your AI usage stats as a badge on your GitHub profile to showcase activity.
- Analyze which AI models you use most frequently and during which hours.
- Join the community leaderboard to compare your usage with other developers.
- Generate a yearly wrapped report to review your AI journey and top models.
- Monitor streaks and maintain consistent AI tool usage habits.
Models Under the Hood
as of 2026-09-01
Limitations
- Burntop is a free, open-source tool for tracking AI usage, supporting 10+ AI tools including Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, and more.
- The primary method of syncing usage data is via CLI command `bunx burntop sync`.
- As a community-driven project, support is primarily through community channels.
as of 2026-09-01
Verification history
We have re-verified Burntop 7 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 7 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published Burntop tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Free Forever
$0/mo
Ideal for
Individual developers and small teams who want free, unlimited AI usage tracking without spending money on analytics tools.
What this tier adds
Starting tier: $0/mo, includes unlimited tracking, all features, leaderboards, achievements, analytics, shareable stats, and yearly wrapped.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Burntop's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Burntop is free forever, with no credit card required, making it ideal for individual developers and small teams who want AI usage tracking without cost. It competes with paid tools like LangSmith, which offers more extensive observability but at a price; for basic tracking, Burntop is the budget-friendly choice.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Burntop — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Individual developers: under 5 minutes, just install and run `bunx burntop sync`. Open-source contributors: 5-10 minutes to add a badge to your README. Teams: 15-30 minutes to set up on multiple machines and review the first dashboard.
Integrations
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
![How to Play Burn — Deep Purple [Playthrough · No Talking]](https://img.youtube.com/vi/L7SzyUhETFs/mqdefault.jpg)
Official links
Tools that pair well with Burntop
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Burntop, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Token Monitor
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PostHog
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Opik (Comet)
Free, open-source AI observability and evals for debugging agents
Featured Head-to-Head Comparisons
Burntop vs Spider Cloud
Choose Burntop if you're a developer wanting to monitor and optimize your personal AI tool usage across multiple platforms for free. Choose Spider Cloud if you're building AI agents or RAG systems that need reliable, cost-effective web data extraction, especially with the new Browser AI commands and data connectors. They serve entirely different needs, so the decision hinges on whether you need to track costs or collect data.
Burntop vs Temporal Ai
If you are an individual developer wanting a free, open-source tool to track AI usage costs across ChatGPT, Claude, and Cursor, Burntop is the clear choice. If you need a production-grade durable execution platform to orchestrate reliable AI agents with retries, human-in-the-loop, and multi-service orchestration, Temporal is essential—though it comes with a learning curve and usage-based pricing for the cloud tier.
Burntop vs Screenplayiq
Burntop and ScreenplayIQ serve completely different domains. Burntop is a free, open-source AI usage tracker for developers, while ScreenplayIQ is a niche screenwriting tool with box office predictions. Choose Burntop if you're a developer monitoring AI spend; pick ScreenplayIQ if you're a screenwriter or producer needing script market analysis.
Alternatives to Burntop
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Free open-source desktop widget tracking tokens, cost, and limits across 29+ AI coding tools.
PostHog
PostHog is an open-source product OS that unifies analytics, session replay, feature flags, and a data warehouse in one platform.
Opik (Comet)
Free, open-source AI observability and evals for debugging agents
Frequently Asked Questions
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