Actvt vs CodexBar: which AI usage app fits your Mac
Updated
Oye Collective makes Actvt, and wrote this page. We’ve described CodexBar from its own README, dated below, and we say plainly where it’s the better choice.
In brief: CodexBar shows how much of each plan is left and when it resets, across more than 100 AI providers, for free. Actvt shows what your Claude Code, Codex and Pi sessions did and cost, along with your Mac’s own load. The two can run side by side.
What each one is
CodexBar is a menu-bar app by Peter Steinberger. It shows session, weekly and monthly usage windows with reset countdowns, credit balances, spend where the provider exposes it, local cost scans, and badges when a provider has an incident. It’s MIT licensed and free. It runs on macOS 14 and later, has a Linux desktop app, and ships a codexbar CLI.
Actvt is a native Mac app that reads the session files Claude Code, Codex and Pi write to disk and keeps them as a searchable history with full transcripts. It shows the live state of running sessions, spend over time by project with a daily heatmap and cache hit ratio, and plan usage meters with reset countdowns. It also shows live CPU, GPU, memory, network and listening ports, scans transcripts for secrets and personal data on-device, and can show sessions from other Macs and Linux machines over SSH.
Side by side
| Feature | CodexBar | Actvt |
|---|---|---|
| Providers and agents | 100+ AI providers | Claude Code, Codex, Pi |
| Plan limits and reset countdowns | Yes, the core of the app | Yes (Premium) |
| Spend | Credits, provider spend, local cost scans | Spend over time by project, heatmap, cache hit ratio (Premium) |
| Provider incident badges | Yes | No |
| Session transcripts and search | No | Yes |
| Live session state | No | Yes |
| System metrics and ports | No | Yes |
| Secrets and personal data in transcripts | No | Yes, scanned on-device |
| Sessions on other machines | No | Yes, over SSH (paid tiers) |
| CLI | Yes | actvt-cli |
| Platforms | macOS 14+, Linux | macOS 15.5+, Apple Silicon |
| Source | Open source (MIT) | Closed source |
| Price | Free | Free tier; $9.99 one-time; Premium $7.99/month billed yearly or $14.99 monthly |
Where CodexBar wins
- It’s free and open source. You can read the code, build it yourself, and pay nothing.
- It covers more providers. If you use Cursor, Gemini, Copilot, OpenRouter or a dozen others alongside Claude and Codex, CodexBar shows them all in one place. Actvt doesn’t try to.
- It runs on Linux and on older Macs. Actvt needs macOS 15.5 or later on Apple Silicon.
- Provider incident badges show when a provider is having an outage.
Where Actvt wins
- Session transcripts. Full transcripts with tool calls, searchable across every session, with what subagents spent and a one-click resume in Terminal.
- Spend over time. Spend by project and by day, with the cache hit ratio.
- Live session state while agents run.
- System metrics: CPU, GPU, memory, network and ports in the same window.
- Secrets and personal data: Actvt flags API keys, emails, card numbers and similar in transcripts, and the scan runs on your Mac.
- Other machines: sessions from other Macs and Linux hosts over SSH.
How each one gets its data
CodexBar reuses the logins you already have for each provider: OAuth and device flow, API keys, local files and, if you opt in, browser cookies. It then calls each provider’s usage API (its README explains which providers need what).
Actvt reads sessions, transcripts and costs from the files the agents write on your Mac. For the plan meters, it reuses the Claude Code and Codex CLIs’ own stored logins to call the same usage endpoints those CLIs call. It doesn’t use browser cookies, and the transcript scan never leaves your Mac.
Pick CodexBar if…
…you mainly want to know how much of each plan is left, you use many AI providers, you want free and open source, or you’re on Linux or macOS 14.
Pick Actvt if…
…you use Claude Code, Codex or Pi and want to read back what your agents did, see what it cost over weeks, catch a secret that ended up in a transcript, or watch your Mac and other machines while agents run.
For every option, including the built-in commands and the terminal tools, see our roundup: How to see what Claude Code and Codex are costing you, on a Mac.
Sources: CodexBar README (read ), actvt.io (read ).
Try it on your own agents
ACTVT is free to start, and reads the session files Claude Code, Codex CLI and Pi already write. Nothing to configure.