ccusage counts your tokens. Fuel Gauge says if you'll make it to reset.
ccusage is a great command-line report of what your coding agents spent. Fuel Gauge answers a different question: at your pace, will your plan's limit last until it resets?
The short version
Use ccusage to see token use and estimated dollar cost by day, month, session, or 5-hour block, across 18 coding agents. Use Fuel Gauge to see, without running anything, whether your Claude Code, Codex, Grok Bot, or Cursor limit will last until it resets, with an alert when it won't. They answer different questions, so they work well together.
What ccusage does well
ccusage reads the usage data coding agents leave on your machine and turns it into reports: daily, weekly, monthly, and session, with tokens and an estimated cost in dollars, plus a blocks report for Claude Code's 5-hour windows. It covers 18 tools, including Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, and GitHub Copilot CLI, and runs with npx ccusage@latest. It's free, MIT licensed, and has about 19,000 stars on GitHub.
Where Fuel Gauge is different
It measures the limit, not the tokens. On Pro and Max, what cuts you off is the percent of your session or weekly limit, and Anthropic doesn't publish how many tokens that is. Fuel Gauge reads those percentages straight from Claude Code after every reply.
It forecasts. Each limit gets a verdict: "Makes it to reset" or "Runs out around 3:40p, 1h 20m early", with the most you can use per hour and still make it.
It's always on. A menu bar app with a glyph that turns orange, one alert per window, and a line under your Claude Code prompt. Nothing to run.
Fuel Gauge vs ccusage
| Fuel Gauge | ccusage | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| License | FSL-1.1-MIT, source on GitHub | MIT |
| What it measures | Percent of your plan's limits | Tokens and estimated cost in dollars |
| Forecast to reset | Yes, with a range | — |
| Where it runs | Mac menu bar, Claude Code status line, CLI | Command line |
| Tools | Claude Code, Codex, Grok Bot, Cursor (opt-in) | 18, including Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI |
| Alerts | Once per window, plus 50/80/95% | — |
| Platforms | macOS 14+ | Anywhere Node, Bun, or Nix runs |
“—” means we couldn't confirm it from ccusage's own materials as of October 2026.
What ccusage does better
History and cost. If you want to know what last month cost at API prices, or compare usage across many agents, ccusage is the tool.
What Fuel Gauge does better
The next few hours. It tells you whether your current limit will last, while you work, without opening a terminal.
Trying it takes a minute
- Install Fuel Gauge.
brew install --cask coreyhaines31/tap/fuelgauge, or download the app from GitHub and drag it to Applications. - Turn on the status line. From the app, or with
fuelgauge install-statusline. It keeps your existing status line and backs upsettings.json. - Keep working. A 5-hour limit gets a forecast after about 10 minutes of readings, a weekly one after 3 hours. Until then it says “Learning your pace.”
- Keep ccusage for reports. The two don't conflict.
Questions
Is ccusage free?
Yes. ccusage is free and MIT licensed. Fuel Gauge is free too, with the source on GitHub under the FSL-1.1-MIT license.
Does Fuel Gauge show dollar costs like ccusage?
No. Fuel Gauge works in percent of your plan's limit, which is what decides whether you get cut off on Pro or Max. ccusage estimates cost from tokens at API prices.
Can I use ccusage and Fuel Gauge together?
Yes. ccusage is a command you run for reports; Fuel Gauge runs in the menu bar. Neither changes the other.
Know if you'll make it.
Free. No account, no subscription.
brew install --cask coreyhaines31/tap/fuelgaugeOr ask your coding agent:
Install Fuel Gauge on my Mac: run `brew install --cask coreyhaines31/tap/fuelgauge`, open Fuel Gauge, then run `fuelgauge install-statusline` and `fuelgauge status`.
macOS 14 Sonoma or later · Apple Silicon and Intel