I started using OpenAI API pretty heavily last year, then added Claude, then Gemini, then Cohere... suddenly I was manually checking 5 different dashboards to understand my spending. It was ridiculous.
The moment it became unbearable was when I hit an unexpected overage because I didn't realize how fast one of my automated workflows was consuming credits. I was just shipping code without visibility into cost.
So I built TokenBar — a tiny menu bar app that aggregates usage across all your AI APIs. You see credits, limits, reset timing, and a "pace indicator" that warns if you're spending faster than usual.
What I learned
1. People hate context-switching. Even if checking one dashboard takes 30 seconds, doing it 5 times is mentally exhausting. Centralizing into one glance matters more than I expected.
2. Real-time data changes behavior. Once people can see their spend rate, they become more thoughtful about API calls. Visibility is powerful.
3. Lifetime pricing works. We priced it at $5 lifetime, and it resonated — people like one-time payments for tools they'll use forever.
4. Incident detection is crucial. The Pro version includes alerts when providers go down. Sounds niche, but we found this saves people from hours of debugging ("why are my API calls failing?").
The hard part wasn't the tech
Aggregating data from different API endpoints was straightforward. The hard part was UX — making it glanceable, not overwhelming.
What worked:
- Menu bar placement (always accessible, never intrusive)
- Simple hierarchy (credits first, then limits, then reset time)
- Color coding for healthy, warning, critical states
- One-click to open full provider dashboard if you need more detail
What I got wrong initially:
- Tried to show too much data. Realized people just want: "How much do I have left?" and "When does it reset?"
- Underestimated how many providers people use. Built for 5, now it handles 20+
- Didn't think about incident detection until users asked for it
Business side
$5 lifetime price point was surprisingly non-negotiable. People wanted a one-time cost, not recurring. Bootstrapped, no funding. Just solved my own problem and shipped it.
If you're juggling multiple AI APIs and tired of checking dashboards, give it a look: tokenbar.site
Happy to answer any questions about the build or the business side.
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