tokeneff: An Open-Source LLM Cost Meter That Runs Locally

nio_zang@hotmail.com zang — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 02:10:15 +0000

Most LLM dashboards show you the bill after the damage is done.

You run a coding agent for an afternoon, ship a feature, and two days later your
OpenAI dashboard says you spent $47. On what? Which model? Which request? You
have no idea — and by then it's too late to do anything about it.

This is the problem we kept hitting, so we built tokeneff — an open-source CLI that puts a real-time electricity meter on your LLM API spend.

⚡ tokeneff 电表  (CNY)

  今日花费       ¥0.0284
  本月累计       ¥0.2524
  月终预测       ~¥0.93 (100% 置信)
  累计节省       ¥0.0421

  今日模型花费分布
  deepseek-v4-flash  ¥0.0192   15,797 tok
  glm-4-flash        ¥0.0092    8,273 tok

How it works

tokeneff runs a tiny local proxy on localhost:7860. You point your LLM client's base_url at it, and it:

Routes your request to the upstream provider (OpenAI, DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi, MiniMax, Anthropic) using your own API key — BYOK, the key never leaves your machine
Adapts request formats automatically (OpenAI ↔ Anthropic conversion)
Meters the token usage from the response
Calculates cost locally using a bundled pricing table — official price vs what you actually pay
Stores the record in a local SQLite DB (token counts only — never your prompts)

your client → tokeneff proxy (localhost:7860) → LLM upstream
                   ↓
              local SQLite meter

It's a transparent pipe. Your requests still go direct to the provider; tokeneff just reads the usage counts from the response and keeps a running tab.

What makes it different

There are a few LLM cost trackers on GitHub already. Here's where tokeneff fits:

Feature	tokeneff	toktrack	tokencost	LLM-Cost-Guardian
Capture method	local proxy	reads CLI logs	manual / proxy	local proxy
Real-time token count	✅	❌	✅	✅
Month-end forecast	✅	❌	❌	❌
Dual region / currency	✅	❌	❌	❌
BYOK + platform dual-mode	✅	❌	❌	❌
Budget alerts	✅	❌	✅	✅

Three things nobody else does:

1. Month-end forecast

The killer feature. Based on your usage trend (weighted: last 7 days × 70% + linear extrapolation × 30%), it predicts what you'll spend by month-end — with a confidence score. Seven days of data and it locks in. "At this rate, I'll hit $31 by the 31st" is the kind of number that actually changes behavior.

2. Dual region / currency

If you're a Chinese developer using DeepSeek/GLM/Kimi, your spend is in CNY ¥. If you're using OpenAI/Claude, it's in USD $. Most tools mash these together into one meaningless number. tokeneff tracks them separately — CNY spend and USD spend are never mixed.

3. BYOK + platform dual-mode

BYOK mode is 100% free and local — your keys, your upstream, zero markup. But there's also a platform mode that routes through the TokenEff gateway (one key, all models, wholesale pricing). The meter shows the savings: official price vs platform price, side by side. You switch when it makes sense, not when you're forced to.

The privacy angle

This matters more than people admit. A cost tracker that sends your request metadata to a cloud service to compute your bill is... not great. tokeneff:

Stores only token counts, model name, cost, timestamp
Never stores prompt content or completions
Runs entirely locally — ~/.tokeneff/meter.db is a SQLite file you can rm anytime
API keys live in the OS keyring, never plaintext on disk

Try it

pip install tokeneff
tokeneff setup          # pick provider, paste key
tokeneff start          # starts the proxy on :7860
tokeneff stats          # see the meter
tokeneff dashboard      # live TUI (refreshes every 0.5s)

Point your client at http://localhost:7860/v1 and start building. Watch the meter while you work — not after.

Ubuntu 22.04 gotcha: the default setuptools (59.6.0) is too old for PEP 621 and installs as UNKNOWN-0.0.0. Run pip install --user --upgrade "setuptools>=70" first. (Yes, this is in the README too.)

What's next

Richer TUI — per-model trend charts, request-level drill-down
More providers — community-contributable registry
Cost comparison reports — "run this task on 5 models, here's what each costs"

Star ⭐ the repo if this solves a problem for you. Issues and PRs welcome — especially new provider additions.

Building tokeneff as part of a broader open-source LLM gateway stack. BYOK meter first, gateway later. The meter is and will remain free + local.

DEV Community: nio_zang@hotmail.com zang