Token Time vs Baton

Detailed side-by-side comparison to help you choose the right tool

Token Time

🟢No Code

developer-tools

A macOS menu-bar app that meters every token your AI agents burn and shows full-screen break reminders when usage crosses thresholds you set — Screen Time, but for your AI tokens.

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Starting Price

$6 one-time (launch price, regularly $8)
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Baton

🔴Developer

developer-tools

A macOS menu bar app that tracks every Claude Code and Codex session on your machine and tells you which AI coding agent is waiting on you right now.

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Starting Price

$0 (self-hosted)
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Feature Comparison

Scroll horizontally to compare details.

FeatureToken TimeBaton
Categorydeveloper-toolsdeveloper-tools
Pricing Plans1 listed plan1 listed plan
Starting Price$6 one-time (launch price, regularly $8)$0 (self-hosted)
Key Features
  • • Menu-bar meter with live token count and today's spend in USD
  • • Hourly usage chart to spot runaway agent sessions the moment they start
  • • Per-model cost breakdown (Opus, Sonnet, GPT-5, etc.) compared to your rolling baseline
  • • Menu bar count of AI agent sessions waiting on you, updated in under a second via FSEvents file watching
  • • Unified view of Claude Code sessions and Codex threads, grouped by waiting, working, and done
  • • Click-to-jump: raises the Claude session's Terminal.app tab or opens Codex threads via codex:// deep links

Token Time - Pros & Cons

Pros

  • ✓One-time $6 launch price — no subscription, no seats, no upsell
  • ✓Fully local: your token history never leaves the Mac (good for client-code or sensitive keys)
  • ✓Menu-bar surface means the number is one glance away, no dashboard to open
  • ✓Configurable full-screen nudges are effective at breaking agent-loop tunnel vision
  • ✓Per-model breakdown makes 'is Opus worth it here?' a real answerable question

Cons

  • ✗Mac-only, Apple Silicon required — no Intel Mac, Windows, or Linux support
  • ✗Only meters what runs locally — remote/cloud agents need a separate observability stack
  • ✗No team or cross-device sync (by design, but a real limitation for multi-machine builders)
  • ✗Not an MCP server or client, so no direct integration with agent tool graphs
  • ✗Very young app — expect some rough edges around less-common model catalogs

Baton - Pros & Cons

Pros

  • ✓Free, open source (MIT), no telemetry, nothing leaves the machine
  • ✓Sub-second updates via FSEvents; negligible CPU/battery cost
  • ✓Handles both Claude Code and Codex in one unified view
  • ✓Click-to-jump saves the biggest actual cost of multi-agent work: finding the right window
  • ✓One-line install with an isolated venv — clean uninstall too

Cons

  • ✗macOS only; no Linux or Windows menu bar equivalent
  • ✗Requires Python 3.9+ on the host (3.11+ for Codex automation tracking)
  • ✗Only tracks Claude Code and Codex — other coding agents (Cursor, Cline, Aider) not supported
  • ✗No push notifications to phone / other devices; menu bar only
  • ✗Read-only by design — cannot send input back to sessions

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