Throttle Meter: Open-Source Claude Code Usage Meter for macOS

✍️ OpenClawRadar📅 Published: May 1, 2026🔗 Source
Throttle Meter: Open-Source Claude Code Usage Meter for macOS
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Claude Code's built-in usage warnings come at 90% — often too late. The 5-hour rolling window is invisible until you're throttled. Throttle Meter is an open-source macOS app (14+) that sits in your menu bar and reads ~/.claude/projects/*.jsonl locally to compute live usage. No telemetry, no network, no signup.

Free Open-Source Version (MIT)

  • Live % in menu bar — session 5h, weekly all, weekly Sonnet
  • Rolling 7-day window math matching claude.ai's actual reset behavior
  • "X tokens saved this week" hero card from token-opt hooks (session-start router + structured pre-compact) that prune irrelevant context. On a multi-project setup it skips ~80k tokens/week
  • Threshold notifications at 80% / 95%
  • One-tap Calendar reminder for next weekly reset
  • Stats: usage trend chart, model split + EUR cost extrapolation, share-to-social badge
  • Diagnostics export for support
  • Buildable from source: xcodegen + Xcode 16 + macOS 14

Hook scripts (POSIX shell, also work on Linux) are in scripts/hooks/.

Repo: github.com/lorislabapp/throttle-meter

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Commercial Sibling: Throttle (€19)

Same local meter plus features not feasible as open-source:

  • Exact mode: drives your already-signed-in Safari via AppleScript and runs fetch('/api/organizations/{org_id}/usage') in Safari's context — cookies stay in Safari, never seen by Throttle. Caveat: unofficial; breaks if Anthropic changes the endpoint (free Meter keeps working).
  • Hour-of-day heatmap, top-projects breakdown
  • AI Assistant (Apple Intelligence / Claude Pro Safari Bridge / BYO API key) that audits CLAUDE.md, settings.json, hooks via real tool calls and emits patches with diff preview
  • Sparkle auto-update

Site: lorislab.fr/throttle (€19 launch, €29 stable, 30-day refund)

The author notes the math is the most likely to be wrong — feedback welcome if the meter doesn't match what you see on claude.ai.

📖 Read the full source: r/ClaudeAI

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👀 See Also