When you use several AI coding tools at once, you end up checking each dashboard or CLI separately: how much of the Codex session window is left, whether you are close to the Claude weekly cap, whether Cursor credits still remain. CodexBar collects all of that into a single spot in the macOS menu bar. It is built by Peter Steinberger, also known as the creator of OpenClaw, and released for free as MIT-licensed open source. As of the published documentation it covers 69 providers, showing the time left before session, weekly, and monthly resets, credit balances, and estimated costs.
Key Features
- One place for many providers: The official documentation registers 69 provider IDs, including Codex (OpenAI), Claude, Gemini, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, Grok, DeepSeek, Mistral, AWS Bedrock, and OpenRouter. You can pick only the ones you actually use and line them up in the menu bar
- Countdowns to the next reset: For each provider it shows the time remaining until the session, weekly, and monthly windows reset, which reduces the chance of only noticing a limit after you hit it
- Credit balances and spending: For usage-based providers it displays credit balances and spend, along with locally estimated cost views for the last 7 and 30 days
- Provider status monitoring: It polls provider status pages on a schedule and shows an incident badge in the menu bar during outages, making it faster to tell whether a problem is on your side or the service’s
- No stored login credentials: Rather than asking for new passwords, it reuses credentials that already exist locally — API keys in config files, environment variables, CLI authentication, and browser sessions. Validated sessions are cached in the macOS Keychain
- CLI, widgets, and localization: It ships a
codexbarcommand you can call from scripts and CI, plus WidgetKit widgets for the desktop and Notification Center. The interface is localized into 21 languages, including RTL support
Pricing
| Plan | Price | Highlights |
|---|---|---|
| Free (MIT license) | $0 | All features available; source code published on GitHub |
Pricing reflects information as of August 2026. Please check the official site and the GitHub repository for the latest details.
Homebrew is the easiest way to install: brew install --cask codexbar for the app itself, and brew install steipete/tap/codexbar for the standalone CLI. It requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.
Pros & Cons
✅ Pros
- Check remaining limits across multiple AI coding tools from the menu bar, without opening any tabs
- Free and MIT-licensed open source, so the behavior can be verified in the code
- No need to hand over new credentials; it reuses existing sessions and API keys
- Status notifications make it quick to isolate the cause when responses slow down
- The bundled CLI lets you pull remaining limits from shell scripts or CI
⚠️ Cons
- macOS only. The app itself is not available on Windows or Linux (a CLI build is distributed for Linux)
- Some readings depend on undocumented provider endpoints or browser sessions, so a provider-side change can temporarily break them
- Cost figures include local estimates and may not match your actual invoice exactly
- Authentication differs per provider, so the first setup may require checking config files or environment variables
- It is an individual developer’s project, with no enterprise support desk or SLA
Comparison with Similar Services
| Criteria | CodexBar | ccusage | Official provider dashboards | Single-purpose menu bar tools |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Form factor | macOS menu bar app + CLI | CLI tool | Web browser | Menu bar app |
| Coverage | Many providers at once | Mainly Claude Code | One service each | Usually one to a few services |
| Always visible | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Outage notifications | Yes | No | Check each status page separately | Varies by tool |
| Price | Free (MIT) | Free (OSS) | Free | Varies by tool |
Who Is It For
- Developers who use two or more AI coding tools such as Codex, Claude Code, and Cursor
- Anyone who wants to avoid work stopping because a weekly limit or monthly credit ran out unexpectedly
- People who also use usage-based APIs and want a routine sense of their spending
- Anyone who wants to quickly judge whether slow responses come from their own connection or a service outage
- People who want to wire remaining limits into their workflow through a CLI or widgets
Summary
CodexBar is a practical utility that gathers the scattered “how much is left” information from multiple AI coding tools into the macOS menu bar. It is free and open source, and because it does not require handing over new credentials, the barrier to trying it is low. The figures it shows include estimates that depend on what each provider exposes, so strict billing management is best handled alongside the official dashboards. The more AI coding tools you juggle, the more it pays off.