I built a local-first CLI to track what I'm actually spending on AI APIs

Every month I got surprised by my OpenAI bill.

Not by a lot — but enough that I'd open the usage dashboard, squint at a chart, try to remember which project burned all those tokens, and give up. The dashboard shows totals. It doesn't help you understand which project cost the most, which model was doing the work, or whether that refactoring session with GPT-4 was actually cheaper than Claude.

So I built AICostTracker — a local CLI that logs API calls and shows a cost breakdown by project and model.

How it works

Log a call after you make it:

I built a local-first CLI to track what I'm actually spending on AI APIs

Related reading

I Tracked Every Dollar I Spent on AI APIs for 6 Months. Then I Went Local.

How I Slashed My AI API Bill by 95% — A Practical Guide for 2026

I Tracked Every Penny I Spent on AI APIs for a Month

I Tracked My AI API Costs for 30 Days. The Results Changed How I Build.

I checked my OpenAI and Anthropic dashboards every morning for a month. Then I…

I Cut My OpenAI Bill by 94% Using Chinese AI Models — Here's Exactly How