BurnRate – Track what you spend on AI coding tools

Name: BurnRate – Track what you spend on AI coding tools
Availability: InStock
Author: mwong17

by mwong17·Mar 7, 2026·1 point·0 comments

Visit Project View on HN

AI Analysis

●●SolidSolve My ProblemDark Horse

Parses local session files for multi-provider AI cost tracking; Anthropic/OpenAI billing pages don't break it down.

Strengths

•Genuine pain point: developers hit rate limits and overpay without visibility. Author's $100/mo Claude story is credible motivation.
•True local-first architecture: zero cloud, no API keys, session data never leaves your machine. Real privacy differentiation.
•20 optimization rules with actionable suggestions (config changes, model recommendations) go beyond passive tracking into advisory.

Weaknesses

•Narrow TAM: only 3 providers (Claude Code, Cursor, OpenAI), and only works if you use these tools. GH Copilot 'coming soon' signals incomplete coverage.
•Crowded adjacent market: Cursor has built-in token counters, Anthropic/OpenAI show billing dashboards. Multi-provider tracking is the main hook, but adoption depends on using multiple paid tools.

Post Description

I was paying $100/mo for Claude Code Pro and had no idea where it was going. I'd hit the 5-hour rate limit constantly, but couldn't tell which sessions were burning through my allocation or whether Opus was worth the premium over Sonnet for my workflows. So I built a tool to find out.

BurnRate is a local CLI that parses your AI coding tool session data and gives you a full cost analytics dashboard. It tracks Claude Code, Cursor IDE, and OpenAI Codex in one place.

Everything runs 100% on your machine. Your session data, token counts, costs, prompts — none of it leaves your computer. No API key to paste, no telemetry. It reads the local session files your tools already generate and does the math.

Out of the box you get: multi-provider cost tracking, 10 different analytics views (daily trends, per-session breakdown, model usage split, token efficiency), an optimization engine with 23 rules that suggests concrete config changes to reduce spend, usage limit monitoring so you know when you're approaching rate limits, side-by-side provider comparison, and budget alerts when you're on track to blow past a monthly cap.

For managers, there's a team dashboard where devs can optionally push anonymized usage snapshots to a shared view. Useful for understanding team-wide AI tool costs and figuring out which plans actually make sense. Free tier available, Pro is $9/mo, Team is $29/mo.Happy to answer any questions. Feedback welcome.