A few months back I got my monthly API bill and felt sick.
I had been vibe-coding pretty hard with Claude, and I knew it wasn't going to be zero. But the number was way higher than I expected. Like, embarrassingly higher. I had been running Claude Code sessions back to back, long context windows, lots of tool calls, and I had no idea how fast it was adding up.
The worst part? I couldn't have known. There's no live feedback. You just work, and then you find out later.
So I did what most developers do when something annoys them enough. I built a tool to fix it.
What I made
TokenBar is a macOS menu bar app that tracks your AI token usage in real time. It sits in your menu bar the whole time you're working and shows you your spend as it happens, not after.
It works with Claude API, OpenAI, and a few others. You paste in your API key, and from that point on you can see tokens and cost right there in the menu bar while you code.
No dashboards to switch to. No end-of-month surprises. Just a number in the corner of your screen that tells you what's actually happening.
Why menu bar
I tried building a dashboard version first. I never looked at it. I'd forget it was there and then check it once a day or not at all.
The menu bar is different because it's persistent. You don't have to remember to check it. You're looking at your menu bar constantly anyway, so the information just becomes part of your workflow.
When I see the number creeping up I naturally adjust. Maybe I close a long context, maybe I switch models, maybe I just stop and think about whether the next prompt is actually necessary. Having visibility changes behavior.
The pricing thing
I charged $5 lifetime. I know it's cheap. But the whole point is that this is a tool to help you spend less money on AI. It felt wrong to charge a lot for that.
Also I wanted it to be a no-brainer purchase. If you use Claude or GPT-4 even occasionally, you'll make back $5 in avoided waste probably on the first week.
If you want to try it
It's at tokenbar.site. Mac only for now.
Would love to hear if other people have had the same experience of getting surprised by their AI bills. It seems like it's more common than people admit.
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