Cost Doctor is a Mac menu bar app for people who use Claude Code or Codex. It reads the session logs on your Mac and shows today's token total, a seven-day chart, and a list of today's sessions, ranked by use. It tells you in plain words why a session is costing so much. It also watches for failed work, and when something fails, your menu bar badge and screen turn red. Your logs never leave your Mac, and there is no account. You can try it free for 14 days, and then it is a one-time $19 purchase.

Key Features

• Tokens by Session: See which sessions used the most today. Each one shows the tool, the project, the number of turns, its current size per turn, where it started, and the share used by subagents.
• Plain-Language Advice: Cost Doctor tells you when a session carries a lot of history and should be compacted, starts with a large tool list, or spends heavily on subagents.
• Limits With a Forecast: See your 5-hour and weekly limits for Claude Code and Codex, when each one resets, and when you will run out at your current pace.
• Every Session at a Glance: Each session is marked as working, finished, waiting on a tool call, or stopped on a failure.
• Red Alerts: Cost Doctor watches for failed checks on your open pull requests, for a session that stopped on a failure and has sat idle, and for alerts from your own scripts. When one happens, the menu bar badge turns red, an optional red frame appears around every screen, and a notification can be sent. The frame never blocks a click.
• Your Own Alerts: Drop a one-line text file in ~/.costdoctor/alerts/ and Cost Doctor raises an alert, so a failed deploy or script can get your attention too.
• Alerts on Your Phone: Paste an ntfy topic or a Slack webhook, and alerts reach you when you are away from your desk.
• Private by Design: Cost Doctor never calls a model, never changes a session, and never uploads your prompts, code, or usage.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Is Cost Doctor free?

No. Cost Doctor is a paid app with a 14-day free trial that has everything switched on. After the trial, today's total keeps showing, and the per-session breakdown, the advice, and the red alerts need a license. The license is a one-time $19 payment, plus tax where it applies, with no subscription.

What does Cost Doctor need?

It needs macOS 13 or later on an Apple silicon or Intel Mac, with Claude Code or Codex installed. Pull request alerts also need the GitHub command line tool (gh), signed in.

Does it use my tokens?

No. It only reads log files, so watching your usage costs nothing. It never edits a prompt, a setting, or a session.

Does it send my data anywhere?

No. There is no account, and your logs, prompts, and code stay on your Mac. A license is a key you paste once, and it is checked on your Mac, offline.

How does it know my plan limits?

Codex writes its limits into its own log files, so they show up on their own. For Claude Code, Cost Doctor asks Anthropic directly with the Claude sign-in already saved on your Mac. It asks your permission first.

Are the dollar amounts exact?

No. They are estimates at published list prices, shown for scale. If you are on a plan, your bill is your plan price, so tokens are the number to watch.

Is there a free version?

Yes. The costdoctor command is free and open source. It prints the same 7-day totals, plan limit forecast, and session advice in your terminal. Install it with Homebrew using the command brew install apexnorthca/tap/costdoctor.