Free. Pay what you want.
The whole app is free and open source, and always will be. If it earns its place in your notch, you can put something towards it — any amount, once, and nothing changes in the app either way.
MIT licensed · unlimited Macs · pay what you want, or nothing
Everything the app does, on as many of your own Macs as you like. No account, no trial, nothing held back.
- ✓All eight assistants — Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Antigravity, Copilot, Kimi Code, OpenCode
- ✓Pace tick, projection and reset time on every window
- ✓The Advice strip and pace-crossing notifications
- ✓Cost from your local transcripts, by model and by project
- ✓Notch, side-edge notch, bottom bar and menu bar layouts
- ✓Hooks for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and Kimi Code, the OpenCode plugin, and the Claude Code status line
- ✓Command line tool, MCP server and local API
- ✓Eleven languages, full VoiceOver, colour-blind-safe throughout
- ✓Signed, notarised, and it updates itself
macOS 15 Sequoia or later · Apple silicon or Intel · signed and notarised
Why it's free
Because you can already read the source
Notchmeter is MIT licensed and the whole repository is public. scripts/build.sh install builds it in twenty seconds. A licence check on top of that would be theatre, and it would tax the one thing an open tool needs, which is people trying it.
Because the project chose it
Not because it had to be. The app never signs in anywhere and sends nothing to a server of ours, and charging would not have to change either: a licence can be a signed file with an issue date that the app checks on your Mac, with no account and no server to ask. Notchmeter is free because the project chose to be free and open while what it needs most is people using it, and that choice will be looked at again once there are real download numbers to decide with. What support pays for is the boring part of shipping a Mac app — Apple's developer programme, notarisation, the domain — and the time to keep the vendors' readings accurate as they change.
Questions
Is the free version limited in any way?
No. There is no trial, no locked feature and no nag. Every assistant, every layout, every notification and the whole cost breakdown are in the app, and the source is on GitHub under MIT.
What do I get for paying?
The same app. Paying is a way of saying it was worth it; it unlocks nothing and it is never asked for again. The link is a Stripe page where you choose the amount, and the only place the app mentions it is one line under the version number in Settings.
Does it work if I only use one assistant?
Yes — turn the others off in Settings and the strip shows what's left, and the rings give the room back to the ones you keep.
Will there be a paid version later?
Nothing is planned. What the app does today stays free and MIT, and every version already released stays under the MIT licence it shipped with. Whether anything paid should exist beside it is the choice this page says will be revisited once there are real download numbers to decide with; if it ever does, this page will say so first, and it will not change what this app does or costs. If something for teams ever exists it will be a separate thing with its own page.
Try it
It takes a minute, needs no account, and stays out of the way.