# Show HN: Pacer – Realtime Claude Code Usage Tracking / Pacing > Source: > Published: 2026-08-20 16:23:20+00:00 **Know what Claude Code is costing you — and how close you are to your limits — right from your Mac's menu bar.** Pacer is a free, open-source macOS app that keeps an eye on your Claude Code usage: the tokens you're burning, what they cost, how close you are to your 5-hour and weekly rate limits, and where the spend is going — by project, by model, by day. It sits quietly in your menu bar, keeps itself up to date, and keeps all of your data on your own Mac. Menu bar & click-down popover | Home-screen & Notification Center widgets | **Share your 5-hour & 7-day burn charts as an image** **More screenshots** — models, projects & collections, six-month history [ ](/EricAndrechek/Pacer/blob/main/docs/screenshots/models.png)**Models — share, trend, and per-model table; group by model or class** [ ](/EricAndrechek/Pacer/blob/main/docs/screenshots/projects-collections.png)**Projects & Collections — group projects, scope totals to a collection** Heads up — early days.Pacer is pre-1.0 and under active development. It works and it's useful today, but expect the occasional rough edge, and your saved history may need to be rebuilt between 0.x versions. (grab the[Download the latest version →](https://github.com/EricAndrechek/Pacer/releases/latest)`Pacer-x.y.z.dmg` file under "Assets").- Open the downloaded file and drag **Pacer** into your**Applications** folder. - Launch Pacer. It lives in your **menu bar**— look for the little gauge icon up top (there's no Dock icon). Click it to open the dashboard. - The first time, macOS asks permission for Pacer to read Claude Code's files. Click **Allow**— that's how Pacer sees your usage. Nothing leaves your Mac. That's all. **Pacer keeps itself up to date automatically:** when a new version ships, it offers to install it for you — no re-downloading, no reinstalling. **You'll need** macOS 15 (Sequoia) or newer, on either Apple Silicon or Intel. **Rate-limit pacing.** Your 5-hour, weekly, and any**per-model** windows — the scoped caps Anthropic reports for your account, like a weekly Fable limit — as easy-to-read pace charts. Are you ahead, on track, or about to hit the wall? Color bands (behind / on track / ahead / nearly maxed) tell you at a glance, and*every*window gets the same forecast: projected fill, time-to-limit, and calibrated bands. Refreshed every few minutes from Anthropic's usage data.**Costs, your way.** See spend the way Claude Code reports it, or have Pacer price it from tokens itself — switchable in Settings. Daily, monthly, and all-time totals included.**Where it's going.** Break usage down by project — grouped into your own non-destructive**collections**— and by model, with every Claude model in its own color and groupable by class. Drill into any single day, and see a GitHub-style activity heatmap of the last six months.**Live "today" view.** Your current burn rate plus a running "at this pace, today will end at about $X" projection.**Multiple accounts.** Signed into more than one Claude account? Pacer tracks each account's usage and limits separately and lets you switch between them.**At a glance, always.** A configurable menu-bar readout — an activity-ring icon, percent chips, and an explicit choice of which window drives the icon — plus home-screen-style widgets, each pickable to whichever window you care about (5-hour, weekly, or a per-model cap) for cost and pacing.**Optional nudges.** Local notifications when you cross a rate-limit threshold (50 / 75 / 90%) — on any window, including a per-model cap — or blow past a daily spending limit you set. Off by default.**Export.** Send daily totals, daily-by-model, or per-project numbers to a CSV for your own spreadsheets. You've got options for keeping an eye on Claude Code usage — Claude Code's own `/usage` , the popular [ ccusage](https://github.com/ryoppippi/ccusage) CLI, and several menu-bar apps — the closest being [Token Pacer](https://tokenpacer.app), a paid, closed-source namesake, plus [Claude God](https://claudegod.app)and [ccseva](https://github.com/Iamshankhadeep/ccseva). They're good tools; here's the honest lay of the land. Pacer | | | | | CC `/usage` | | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | Form factor | Menu-bar app | Menu-bar app | Menu-bar app | Menu-bar app | CLI | In-terminal | | Native macOS (not Electron) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – (Electron) | – | – | | Always-on, glanceable | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | | Live limit % from Anthropic's API | ✓ | ✦ | ✓ | ✦ | ✦ | ✓ | | Per-model (scoped) limit windows | ✓ | – | – | – | – | – | | Pace vs. ideal-burn line | ✓ | – | – | – | – | – | | End-of-day spend projection | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | | Activity heatmap (6 months) | ✓ | – | – | – | – | – | | Per-project & per-model breakdown | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – | | Beyond Claude Code (Codex, opencode, …) | – | ✓ | – | – | – | – | | Home-screen / Notification Center widgets | ✓ | – | ✓ | – | – | – | | Threshold / budget notifications | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – | – | | CSV export | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – | ✓ | – | | ROI: cost vs. git commits | – | – | ✓ | – | – | – | | Claude Code plugin marketplace | – | – | ✓ | – | – | – | | Price | Free | $29 one-time | Free | Free | Free | Included | | Free & open source | ✓ | – | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | – | ✦ estimates the windows from your local JSONL logs rather than reading Anthropic's usage API. Token Pacer is a paid, closed-source app, so its column is read from its public site rather than its source — and some of its features (CSV export, custom model pricing) are Pro-tier. Best-effort as of June 2026 — these tools all move fast, so corrections are welcome via an issue or PR. **The gist:** **vs.**— Claude Code's built-in view is a`/usage` *snapshot you ask for*in one terminal; Pacer is the always-on, zoomed-out companion that remembers every session. The speedometer in one car vs. the dashboard that logs every trip.**vs.**— a great CLI for scriptable numbers (Pacer's tests even cross-check their scanner against it); Pacer is the GUI you glance at instead of a command you re-run, and it reads your`ccusage` *actual*limit % from Anthropic rather than estimating from logs.**vs. Claude God / ccseva**— the closest rivals, and genuinely nice. Pacer leans into*pacing*(your windows against an ideal-burn line, "will I run out before the reset?"), native + quiet-by-default, and signed/notarized self-update; Claude God goes further on ROI/git correlation and a plugin marketplace, and ccseva on its glassy UI. Pick the one that thinks about your usage the way you do — they coexist happily.**vs. Token Pacer**— the close namesake, and the nearest thing to a direct rival: also a native, local-first macOS menu-bar tracker, and it reaches*wider*— covering Codex and opencode alongside Claude Code, with "next action" nudges. The trade-offs: it's**$29 and closed-source**, where Pacer is free and open; Pacer reads your*real*limit % from Anthropic and adds the ideal-burn pacing line, the 6-month heatmap, and widgets. Multi-agent and willing to pay? Fair pick. Claude Code-first and value open source? Pacer. Pacer is **local-first**. It reads only the files Claude Code already writes to your own Mac, and it sends nothing about your usage anywhere: `~/.claude/projects/*.jsonl` — your session token usage, read on your machine.- The Claude Code login token in your macOS Keychain — used only to ask Anthropic for your rate-limit status, the same way Claude Code itself does. The **only** network connections Pacer makes are: `api.anthropic.com` — to check your rate-limit windows (~12 small requests an hour while it's running).`github.com` — to check for, download, and install app updates (at launch, then every 6 hours; installs happen in the background when automatic updates are on). **No analytics, no telemetry, no third parties.** Your data stays on your Mac in `~/Library/Group Containers/…/pacer.sqlite` , and it persists across app updates. Pacer is SwiftUI + SwiftData + Charts, signed with Developer ID and notarized, auto-updating via [Sparkle](https://sparkle-project.org). Contributions welcome — see [ CONTRIBUTING.md](/EricAndrechek/Pacer/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md). | Component | Role | |---|---| `Pacer.app` | Main UI + menu-bar item. Data collection (FSEvents JSONL scan + OAuth poll) runs in-process inside this binary — there is no separate daemon. | `PacerWidgets` | WidgetKit extension — reads the shared App Group store directly. | `PacerCore` | Shared Swift package — parsers, models, scan coordinator, recomputers. | For everyday use, the [released DMG](https://github.com/EricAndrechek/Pacer/releases/latest) is what you want — this section is only for hacking on Pacer. **Requirements:** macOS 15 SDK (Xcode 16+) and `xcodegen` (`brew install xcodegen` ). The Xcode project is generated from `project.yml` — never edit the `.xcodeproj` directly. ``` make verify # unsigned compile-only check (no Apple account needed) make test # PacerCore unit + ground-truth tests make install # signed + notarized build → /Applications/Pacer.app make screenshots # regenerate the README screenshots (see docs/screenshots.md) make help # everything else ``` `make verify` and `make test` need no signing setup and are all that CI runs. To build a *runnable* app you need your own Apple Developer account — point the install at it with `PACER_SIGN_IDENTITY="Developer ID Application: ()" make install` . See [CONTRIBUTING → "Building and running it yourself"](/EricAndrechek/Pacer/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#building-and-running-it-yourself) for the full story (and why an App Group ties signing to your Team ID). [ AGENTS.md](/EricAndrechek/Pacer/blob/main/AGENTS.md) is the deep architectural guide (performance invariants, the SwiftData schema, the recomputer pattern); [covers the design, perf-tuning,](/EricAndrechek/Pacer/blob/main/docs) `docs/` [screenshot generation](/EricAndrechek/Pacer/blob/main/docs/screenshots.md), and release process. Pushing a `vX.Y.Z` tag triggers [ .github/workflows/release.yml](/EricAndrechek/Pacer/blob/main/.github/workflows/release.yml), which builds, signs, notarizes, packages a DMG, signs the Sparkle update, publishes the GitHub Release, and updates `appcast.xml` on the `gh-pages` branch. See [for the secrets and the cut-a-release checklist.](/EricAndrechek/Pacer/blob/main/docs/releasing.md) `docs/releasing.md` [MIT](/EricAndrechek/Pacer/blob/main/LICENSE). Pacer reads data from Anthropic's Claude Code product but is not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic.