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 five assistants — Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Antigravity, Copilot
- ✓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 and GitHub Copilot, and the Claude Code status line
- ✓Command line tool, MCP server and local API
- ✓Six languages, full VoiceOver, colour-blind-safe throughout
- ✓Signed, notarised, and it updates itself
macOS 14 Sonoma 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 a meter should not have a login
The app never signs in anywhere and never sends anything anywhere, and a paid tier would need an account to check. So there is no tier. 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 five 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?
Not of this. The personal meter stays free and MIT; that is the point of it. If something for teams ever exists it will be a separate thing with its own page, and it will not change what this app does or costs.
Try it
It takes a minute, needs no account, and stays out of the way.