If you build with AI tools all day on macOS, you've probably had this moment: deep in a flow state, refactoring something, and Claude suddenly tells you you're rate limited. Or Cursor quietly stops working. Or you check your OpenRouter dashboard a week later and realize your credits are gone.
The problem isn't the limits. The problem is the lack of visibility. Each provider has its own dashboard, its own reset window, its own pricing model. Nobody actually opens 8 tabs to check them.
Here's the setup I landed on.
The goal
One glance, full picture. I want to know — without leaving my editor — how close I am to a rate limit, how many credits I have left, and when things reset. Across every AI provider I use.
The tool
I built a small macOS menu bar app called TokenBar that polls each provider's usage endpoint and surfaces the numbers in the menu bar. It supports Claude, Cursor, Codex, Copilot, Gemini, OpenRouter, Augment, Amp, JetBrains AI, Warp, Kiro, and a bunch of others — about 20 providers right now.
The menu bar shows a compact indicator. Click it and you get per-provider breakdowns: usage percent, credits remaining, reset countdown, and a pace indicator that tells you whether you're on track to blow past your window.
Why menu bar
Two reasons.
First, it's glanceable. Opening a dashboard breaks flow. Glancing at the menu bar doesn't.
Second, it pairs naturally with the rest of a focused-coding setup. I run Monk Mode for Mac to block YouTube, Shorts, and X feeds at the source, then TokenBar sits two icons over and tells me what my locked-in session is actually costing. Both apps stay out of the way until I need them.
The workflow
- Start a session, open the IDE
- Glance at the menu bar — see I have 70% of my Claude window left and 4 hours until reset
- Build
- When the indicator turns yellow, I know to either slow down or switch to a different provider for the rest of the session
- No more surprise rate limits, no more "wait, where did my credits go"
Pricing
TokenBar is $5 lifetime for the basic version, $10 for pro. One-time, no subscription. I built it because I wanted it to exist; the price is just there to keep it sustainable.
If this sounds useful: https://tokenbar.site
Curious what other people use to keep track of multi-provider AI spend. Drop your setup in the comments — always looking for better workflows.
Top comments (0)