# tokeneff: An Open-Source LLM Cost Meter That Runs Locally > Source: > Published: 2026-09-13 02:10:15+00:00 **Most LLM dashboards show you the bill *after* the damage is done.** You run a coding agent for an afternoon, ship a feature, and two days later your OpenAI dashboard says you spent $47. On what? Which model? Which request? You have no idea — and by then it's too late to do anything about it. This is the problem we kept hitting, so we built **[tokeneff](https://github.com/zangxin75/token-efficiency)** — an open-source CLI that puts a real-time electricity meter on your LLM API spend. ``` ⚡ tokeneff 电表 (CNY) 今日花费 ¥0.0284 本月累计 ¥0.2524 月终预测 ~¥0.93 (100% 置信) 累计节省 ¥0.0421 今日模型花费分布 deepseek-v4-flash ¥0.0192 15,797 tok glm-4-flash ¥0.0092 8,273 tok ``` `tokeneff` runs a tiny local proxy on `localhost:7860`. You point your LLM client's `base_url` at it, and it: ``` your client → tokeneff proxy (localhost:7860) → LLM upstream ↓ local SQLite meter ``` It's a transparent pipe. Your requests still go direct to the provider; tokeneff just reads the `usage` counts from the response and keeps a running tab. There are a few LLM cost trackers on GitHub already. Here's where tokeneff fits: | Feature | tokeneff | toktrack | tokencost | LLM-Cost-Guardian | |---|---|---|---|---| | Capture method | **local proxy** | reads CLI logs | manual / proxy | local proxy | | Real-time token count | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | | **Month-end forecast** | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | | **Dual region / currency** | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | | **BYOK + platform dual-mode** | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | | Budget alerts | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | Three things nobody else does: The killer feature. Based on your usage trend (weighted: last 7 days × 70% + linear extrapolation × 30%), it predicts what you'll spend by month-end — with a confidence score. Seven days of data and it locks in. "At this rate, I'll hit $31 by the 31st" is the kind of number that actually changes behavior. If you're a Chinese developer using DeepSeek/GLM/Kimi, your spend is in CNY ¥. If you're using OpenAI/Claude, it's in USD $. Most tools mash these together into one meaningless number. tokeneff tracks them **separately** — CNY spend and USD spend are never mixed. BYOK mode is 100% free and local — your keys, your upstream, zero markup. But there's also a **platform mode** that routes through the TokenEff gateway (one key, all models, wholesale pricing). The meter shows the savings: official price vs platform price, side by side. You switch when it makes sense, not when you're forced to. This matters more than people admit. A cost tracker that sends your request metadata to a cloud service to compute your bill is... not great. tokeneff: `~/.tokeneff/meter.db` is a SQLite file you can `rm` anytime ``` pip install tokeneff tokeneff setup # pick provider, paste key tokeneff start # starts the proxy on :7860 tokeneff stats # see the meter tokeneff dashboard # live TUI (refreshes every 0.5s) ``` Point your client at `http://localhost:7860/v1` and start building. Watch the meter while you work — not after. **Ubuntu 22.04 gotcha:** the default `setuptools` (59.6.0) is too old for PEP 621 and installs as `UNKNOWN-0.0.0`. Run `pip install --user --upgrade "setuptools>=70"` first. (Yes, this is in the README too.) Star ⭐ the [repo](https://github.com/zangxin75/token-efficiency) if this solves a problem for you. Issues and PRs welcome — especially new provider additions. *Building tokeneff as part of a broader open-source LLM gateway stack. BYOK meter first, gateway later. The meter is and will remain free + local.*