ccusage vs Claude Monitor, and a desktop option that covers both

In the ccusage vs Claude Monitor question, ccusage is the better pick for reports across several coding CLIs, and Claude Code Usage Monitor is the better pick for a live view of one Claude Code session. If you want both kinds of answer without keeping a terminal open, UsageAtlas, a free desktop dashboard, covers more ground than either.

Two terminal tools with different jobs

Both projects are free, MIT licensed and run in a terminal, which is why they get compared. They answer different questions, though.

ccusage asks "what did I use?" It reads local data that coding agents leave on disk and prints tables by day, week, month or session. Run npx ccusage@latest and it reports every source it detects. Its README lists Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Amp, Droid, Gemini CLI and a dozen more. It can also show Claude Code's five-hour blocks, export JSON and filter by date.

Claude Code Usage Monitor asks "how am I doing right now?" It is a Python tool you install with uv tool install claude-monitor or pip. It draws a live terminal screen for Claude Code, forecasts your pace toward the next reset and can keep an opt-in local history. It is built for Claude Code only.

How they compare

Where each one falls short

ccusage is a snapshot. You run it, read it, and it is gone until you run it again, which makes it easy to miss a window that is close to running out.

Claude Code Usage Monitor is focused on one tool. If half your day is in Codex or Cursor, its screen only tells part of the story.

Both live in a terminal tab that you have to keep open and look at.

The third option: UsageAtlas

UsageAtlas sits outside the terminal. It is a free, open-source desktop app that reads supported provider state and local session data on your machine. For Claude Code it shows the five-hour and weekly windows and local activity. For Codex it shows session and weekly windows. For Cursor it reads plan and API usage from the signed-in editor.

What makes it a good fit for people stuck between the two tools above:

• One dashboard for remaining capacity, reset times, tokens, models and cost estimates.
• A desktop alert when a window crosses a threshold you set, one per reset cycle.
• History views with a per-tool filter, so you can see a single tool or the combined total.
• No account for local use, and prompts and responses are not read.

Cost figures are estimates, so treat them as a guide and use your provider's billing page for exact numbers.

Which should you install?

• You write scripts and want JSON: ccusage.
• You only use Claude Code and like a live terminal screen: Claude Code Usage Monitor.
• You use more than one coding tool, or you want limits and history without a terminal tab: the UsageAtlas desktop app.

Nothing stops you from running all three. They read the same local data without changing it, so you can try UsageAtlas next to the tool you already use and keep whichever answers your question faster.