March 14, 2026
Tick-tock, your tokens are leaking
Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI spend in real-time)
New tool shows Claude costs live — devs cheer, rage, and meme
TLDR: claudetop adds a live money meter to Claude Code so users can see costs, model swaps, and waste as they work. The crowd is split between praising the transparency, roasting the installer, shouting “use local models,” and venting about Anthropic’s billing, all while joking about a Geiger counter for their budgets.
Your AI bill just got a live scoreboard. The community is buzzing over claudetop, a status bar add‑on for Claude Code that shows what you’re spending in real time, complete with warnings like “OVER BUDGET” and “TRY /fast.” The creator, liorwn, says they built it after a $10 estimate turned into a $65 charge — cue universal dev shudder. Now you can see your dollars per hour, which model’s guzzling cash, and whether the cache is saving you money.
Then the drama hit. One user tried the one‑liner install and immediately face‑planted, sparking the classic “curl | bash” slap-fight and a chorus of “make it portable.” The Local Model Purists showed up with the eternal line: “Have you tried a local model?” Meanwhile, an angry customer unloaded on Anthropic’s billing: unpaid balances, new API keys, and a whole lot of “this is nuts.” The vibe: love the tool, hate the surprise bills.
Amid the chaos, jokesters pitched a Geiger counter soundtrack so you can hear your wallet cry, and asked for “opencode support.” Fans say the smart alerts and model price comparisons are exactly the reality check they need. Critics want smoother install and better vendor billing. Either way, claudetop turned quiet bill shock into loud, meme-able math.
Key Points
- •claudetop adds a real-time status line to Claude Code showing session cost, hourly burn rate, and projected monthly spend.
- •The tool compares costs across Claude Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku using cache-aware pricing and updates rates from pricing.json when Anthropic changes prices.
- •It highlights cache efficiency and flags issues like low cache hit ratio, high burn rate, or imminent context compaction via smart alerts.
- •Installation options include a Claude Code plugin (with SessionEnd hook and slash commands), a one-line curl installer, and a GitHub clone with install.sh.
- •All sessions are logged, with commands to view summaries by day, week, month, all time, and filter by tag for cost analytics.