burnlog vs ccusage
These aren't really competitors, and pretending otherwise would waste your time. ccusage is a local analysis tool: it reads the usage logs your agents already wrote and tells you what you spent, by day, week, month, session, and model, without an account and without sending anything anywhere. burnlog is a leaderboard: it counts the same kind of usage and then ranks you against other people.
If nothing about your usage needs to leave your machine, ccusage is the right answer and burnlog has nothing to add. Plenty of people run both — ccusage for the ledger, burnlog for the standings.
What ccusage is
A CLI that analyses coding-agent token usage and cost from local data, with cache-aware token accounting and per-day, per-week, per-month and per-session breakdowns.
Side by side
| burnlog | ccusage | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is for | Ranking your usage against other people, publicly | Understanding your own usage and cost, locally |
| Account required | GitHub sign-in to appear on the board; the scan works signed out | None, ever |
| Data leaving your machine | Token counts, model, agent, an opaque id and a timestamp | Nothing |
| Agents read from local logs | Claude Code, Codex, Hermes | 16+ sources, including Copilot CLI, Goose, Kilo, Qwen and more |
| Agents with no readable log | Counted at the wire by burnlog wrap, across 14 providers | Out of scope — it reads what is on disk |
| Cost figures | Estimated server-side from tokens, per bucket | Calculated locally, with an offline pricing cache |
| Leaderboard, ranks, badge | Public board, 11-rank ladder, achievements, README badge | None — sharing is a compact mode meant for screenshots |
| Licence | MIT CLI, self-hostable app | MIT |
ccusage facts read from its own README and site on 2026-08-13. If something here is out of date, tell us and it gets fixed.
Use ccusage when
- You want your usage data to stay on your machine, full stop.
- You use an agent burnlog has no log adapter for and you don't want to run anything under a proxy — ccusage reads considerably more log formats than burnlog does.
- You want a precise local cost ledger, including Claude Code's 5-hour billing windows, rather than a rank.
Use burnlog when
- The point is the competition — a public board, a rank, and a number your friends can see.
- Your tokens go through something with no readable log, or through a provider beyond the usual two: wrap counts at the wire, so a tool burnlog has never heard of still counts.
- You want a README badge that updates itself, or a profile to point at.
Try it in a minute
It scans, shows you your numbers, and only then asks for an account. Nothing to uninstall if you don't like it.
$ npx @sxnalabs/burnlog