Openusage
OpenUsage tracks Cursor, Claude Code, Codex and Copilot AI usage and spending from your macOS menu bar — free and open source.
If you pay for more than one AI coding subscription on a Mac, OpenUsage answers the question you actually have every afternoon — am I about to hit a wall — for free. The localhost:6736 JSON API is the part paid trackers rarely match, since your status line can pull the same live numbers. Just don't expect Windows, Linux, or a vendor support contract.
Verified 1d ago · liveness 69/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/openusage
- macOS developers paying for several AI coding subscriptions who want one glanceable view of limits and spend
- Free/open-source advocates who want no account, no vendor lock-in and MIT-licensed code
- Power users ready to curl localhost:6736 and pipe usage JSON into status lines, editor plugins or scripts
- Developers who want early warning before hitting session or weekly caps and triggering overage charges
- Windows or Linux users — OpenUsage is a macOS-native Swift app with no cross-platform build
- Anyone on macOS below 15, since the app requires macOS 15+
- Teams needing a vendor SLA, dedicated support or an enterprise contract
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Skip OpenUsage if you're on Windows or Linux, if your Mac runs macOS 14 or older, or if you need vendor support and SLA guarantees — it's a free community tool with no paid tiers.
OpenUsage is free at every tier — no paid plans, no hidden fees. That makes it an easy choice over paid trackers like $15/mo solutions if you're a solo developer or small team on macOS 15+. For Windows/Linux or enterprise-scale needs, a paid cross-platform tracker may be a better fit.
In short
Openusage — OpenUsage tracks Cursor, Claude Code, Codex and Copilot AI usage and spending from your macOS menu bar — free and open source. Best for macOS developers paying for several AI coding subscriptions who want one glanceable view of limits and spend, Free/open-source advocates who want no account, no vendor lock-in and MIT-licensed code, Power users ready to curl localhost:6736 and pipe usage JSON into status lines, editor plugins or scripts. Free to use.
What's new in Openusage
Checked 17 days agoAcross the latest 2 updates: 2 feature updates.
What people actually say about Openusage — 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.
20 mentions across 3 sources (Hacker News, YouTube, GitHub) · researched Jul 30, 2026.
Average across the 3 sources that answered — each source counts once, not each post.
- +Free and open source with no signup required.
- +Tracks multiple AI coding tools in one menu bar.
- +Color-coded progress bars for limits at a glance.
- +Local REST API for custom scripts and integrations.
- +Lightweight Swift/SwiftUI app with minimal resource usage.
- −Only compatible with macOS 15+; no official Linux support.
- −Limited community feedback and real-world validation.
- −52 open GitHub issues suggest ongoing stability challenges.
- −Requires manual setup for each supported AI tool.
- −No Windows support at all.
- • None, but requires macOS 15+ and manual configuration for each provider
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is Openusage? 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
- Menu bar usage tracking for Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, Copilot
- Session, weekly and monthly limit progress bars per provider
- Reset timers showing when each plan's limits refresh
- Token usage and dollar spending display with 30-day totals
- Automatic refresh every 2 minutes
- Local REST API at localhost:6736 with no auth or tokens
- JSON endpoints /v1/usage and /v1/usage/claude
- Usage trend visualization
- Plugin-driven provider system for adding new tools
- Antigravity provider support (v0.7.6 stable)
- Native Swift and SwiftUI app for macOS 15+
- No account or signup required
- Open source under MIT license
- Multi-provider overview in a single panel
About Openusage
OpenUsage is a free, open-source macOS menu bar app that consolidates AI coding subscriptions into one glanceable panel: session, weekly and monthly limits, reset timers, token counts and dollar spending. It's built for developers paying for several AI coding tools at once — Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot, Devin, Grok, OpenRouter, Z.ai and Antigravity — who are tired of hopping between provider dashboards to check where they stand. The app is a native Swift and SwiftUI build for macOS 15+, refreshing every two minutes so progress bars and "resets in 4h 57m" style timers stay current. Usage trends and 30-day spend totals sit alongside per-plan rows, so you can see that, say, your Cursor API limit is already exhausted while Claude Team 5x still has room. A plugin-driven provider system means new tools get added without waiting on the core team — Antigravity landed as a provider in v0.7.6. What separates OpenUsage from a simple counter is its local REST API at localhost:6736. Endpoints like /v1/usage and /v1/usage/claude return structured JSON with no auth and no tokens required — a single curl call, so your status line, editor extension or shell script can read the same numbers the menu bar shows. The project is MIT-licensed, has 54 contributors, ships v0.7.11 stable with v0.7.12-beta.1 available, and requires no account or signup. Against paid AI usage trackers, OpenUsage's pitch is ownership: keep the exact metrics and subscriptions you care about, on your own machine, at zero cost. The tradeoff is platform and polish — it's macOS 15+ only, and the refreshed UI is still working through beta, while support comes from open-source maintainers rather than a vendor SLA.
Behind the Verdict
Most developers don't need another analytics dashboard. They need to know, right now, whether this next long agent run will burn their last session credit. That's the narrow job OpenUsage does, and it does it from the menu bar where you'll actually see it. We'd reach for this when you're carrying three or four subscriptions and the billing pages disagree with your intuition. Claude Team 5x can look fine while Cursor Ultra's API usage sits at 0% left with $364 in extra usage already spent — seeing both rows at once is the whole point. The local API is the sleeper feature. Because /v1/usage returns plain JSON with no auth, anyone comfortable with a shell script can wire spend and reset timers into a tmux status line, an editor plugin, or a team dashboard. Vendors with paid trackers tend to keep that data behind their own UI. Where it bites: macOS 15+ only, so Windows and Linux are simply out. The customisable refreshed UI shipped as a beta, so if visual polish matters more than data, wait for it to settle. And support is community-driven — 54 contributors and maintainers like Robin Ebers, Mert Can Demir and David Arutyunyan ship fixes fast, but nobody is contractually obliged to answer you. The closest alternative is a paid usage tracker with cross-platform apps and human support. Pick that if you're not on a Mac, or if your org needs an SLA. Pick OpenUsage if you're on macOS, want the raw numbers and the API, and would rather run a Swift app you can fork than pay a subscription to watch your subscriptions.
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Openusage actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
You're mid-session on Claude Team and want to know if you're about to hit the 5-hour session limit. You glance at the menu bar and see Session 100% left, Resets in 5h, and a Today $118.90 · 240.3M tokens figure.
Outcome: You don't interrupt your flow — you know exactly where you stand and can plan your next break around the reset timer. No surprise overage at the end of the month.
You want a single view of what you're spending this month across all three tools, without opening each dashboard.
Outcome: You download OpenUsage, add the providers via plugins, and the menu bar shows weekly limits and last-30-days spending for each. You spot a spike in OpenRouter usage and cut back on a non-essential workflow.
You already run SketchyBar and want your AI usage inline with your CPU and memory stats.
Outcome: You curl localhost:6736/v1/usage from a cron job every few minutes, format the JSON, and display tokens or percent remaining in your status line. It's live, local, and requires no auth.
Use Cases
- Monitor your Claude Team plan session limit from the menu bar to avoid interruptions during a coding session.
- Track API usage for Cursor Ultra and see when you're approaching the auto/extra usage cap.
- Check daily token spend for multiple AI tools (Codex, Claude, Copilot) in one place without opening dashboards.
- Pipe usage data into your own monitoring scripts via the local REST API at localhost:6736.
- Compare real-time spending across Claude, Codex, and Cursor to optimize subscription costs.
- Set up custom alerts by polling the API from a cron job or status bar widget.
Limitations
- OpenUsage is a macOS-only app (macOS 15+) that tracks AI coding tool usage and spending from the menu bar.
- It is free and open source.
- A beta version (v0.7.12-beta.1) is available alongside the stable v0.7.11 release, so beta builds may include incomplete features.
- There are no underlying AI models—it is a usage tracker.
as of 2026-08-29
Verification history
We have re-verified Openusage 6 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-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
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 Openusage tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
OpenUsage Stable
$0/mo
Ideal for
Solo developer on macOS 15+ who wants a no-account, no-risk way to track AI subscription usage across multiple providers.
What this tier adds
Starting tier — free, open source (MIT), full usage tracking for all supported providers, local REST API, and plugin system. No paid upgrade path.
OpenUsage Beta
$0/mo
Ideal for
Power user or early adopter who wants the refreshed UI and new provider data options before they hit stable, and is comfortable with occasional bugs.
What this tier adds
Beta channel — same price ($0), but with early access to features like the refreshed UI (as of 0.7.7-beta.1) and additional provider data options.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Openusage's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
OpenUsage is free at every tier — no paid plans, no hidden fees. That makes it an easy choice over paid trackers like $15/mo solutions if you're a solo developer or small team on macOS 15+. For Windows/Linux or enterprise-scale needs, a paid cross-platform tracker may be a better fit.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Openusage — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Installing OpenUsage on macOS 15+ is quick: download the latest stable v0.7.10 from the homepage, drag it to Applications, and launch it. It scans for supported providers (Cursor, Claude, Codex, Copilot, etc.) automatically. Most users are seeing their limits in the menu bar within 5 minutes. For custom API use, you can start curling localhost:6736/v1/usage immediately — no account or auth needed.
Switching to or from Openusage
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From paid trackers like Cron or BuildBuddy: OpenUsage is free and open source; just download and add your providers. No import needed since it reads live activity.
- ↗To a cloud-based tracker: Since OpenUsage uses local data, export your usage trends by polling the API and saving the JSON, then import into another tool.
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Openusage”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “Openusage” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about Openusage.
Official links
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Featured Head-to-Head Comparisons
Openusage vs Temporal Ai
Choose Temporal AI if you need a rock-solid backend to make AI agents or microservices survive crashes, retries, and failures—it's the infrastructure behind OpenAI's reliability. Pick Openusage if you're a macOS developer juggling multiple AI coding tools and want a free, real-time dashboard to avoid hitting limits or overspending. They solve completely different problems: one builds resilient systems, the other tracks usage.
Openusage vs Spider Cloud
If you're a developer using multiple AI coding tools on macOS and want to track usage & costs without leaving your menu bar, OpenUsage is the perfect free, open-source companion. But if your primary need is feeding web data into AI agents or RAG pipelines at scale, Spider Cloud's all-in-one API with Silk extraction and flat-rate Unlimited plan is the clear winner. Choose based on whether your bottleneck is monitoring AI spend or acquiring structured web data.
Openusage vs Voyage Ai
These tools serve completely different needs. Pick Voyage AI if you need high-accuracy embedding and reranking for enterprise RAG on domains like finance or legal—be prepared to talk to sales. Choose Openusage if you're a macOS developer juggling multiple AI coding assistants and need a free, open-source way to track your usage and spending from the menu bar.
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Frequently Asked Questions
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