CapMeter vs. CodexBar
I built CapMeter, so read this knowing that. CodexBar is a real, well-built app — free and open-source (MIT), and I'd rather describe it accurately than pretend it's weaker than it is.
What CodexBar actually does
It's a Swift menu bar app that tracks usage across 69 providers — Codex, Claude, Cursor, Gemini, Copilot, and dozens more — reading each one's existing session, no separate login required. It shows reset countdowns for session and weekly windows, credit balances and spend where a provider exposes that, and a "Burn Down" widget that compares your remaining budget against an ideal steady pace. It's distributed through GitHub releases and Homebrew, not the Mac App Store, and needs macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.
Where it genuinely wins
Breadth is the real story: 69 providers is far beyond what CapMeter or any paid competitor covers, and free-with-source-available is a legitimate trust model of its own — you can read exactly what it does before you run it. If you bounce between a lot of different AI coding tools and want one thing tracking all of them, CodexBar covers ground nothing else here does.
Where they actually differ
The "burn rate" framing is close on both sides, so it's worth being precise: CodexBar's Burn Down widget compares your pace against a steady-rate line, which is a similar idea to CapMeter's live estimate, but CapMeter states it as a direct countdown in the main view — "limit in ~1h 18m" — rather than a chart you interpret. Beyond that:
- Alerts — CapMeter can notify Slack, Discord, or any webhook when you cross a threshold, with quiet hours. CodexBar's incident badges are for provider status (outages), not your own usage thresholds.
- Export — CapMeter keeps CSV/JSON-exportable history. CodexBar's widgets show a recent-usage chart, without export.
- Distribution and OS support — CapMeter is Mac App Store-only (Apple's own sandboxing and review), and supports macOS 12+. CodexBar needs macOS 14+ and installs via GitHub/Homebrew — a different trust model, not a worse one, just a different one depending on what you're comfortable installing.
- Scope — CapMeter deliberately covers two providers (Claude and Codex) instead of 69, in exchange for account-level reads on both — browser and CLI usage land in the same number, not just what a provider's local files expose.
Which one to pick
If you use more than a couple of AI coding tools and want one free app watching all of them, CodexBar is the wider net. If you're specifically on Claude and Codex, want alerts that reach you somewhere other than the menu bar, and want your history exportable, that's the narrower job CapMeter is built for.