zaehler

Track API token usage per request, locally.

zaehler (binary: zlr) is a small daemon that sits between your AI tools and the AI API's (Claude, Codex, Gemini, ...). It logs the exact token usage of every call to a local SQLite database. Nothing leaves your machine besides the request itself, which was going to Anthropic anyway.

export-1780166059789.mp4

Install

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Mechse/zaehler/master/install.sh | bash

Uninstall

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Mechse/zaehler/master/uninstall.sh | bash

Use

zlr start                                          # start the daemon

zlr today    # today's totals
zlr tail     # last 20 calls

zlr stop     # stop the daemon

Compatibility

Operating systems

OS	Supported
macOS	✅ yes
Linux	✅ yes
Windows	❌ no

AI tools

Tool	Supported
Claude Code	✅ yes
Cursor (own backend mode)	❌ no
GitHub Copilot	❌ no
Claude.ai web	❌ no

Requirements

Odin — brew install odin (macOS) or https://odin-lang.org/docs/install/
OpenSSL 3 — brew install openssl@3 (macOS) or apt install libssl-dev (Debian/Ubuntu)
SQLite 3 — ships with macOS; apt install libsqlite3-0 (Debian/Ubuntu)

License

Elastic License v2. Free for personal and internal use; you may not offer it as a hosted service.