AgentMeter vs burnban

AgentMeter and burnban are both inference engines & infra tracked by AIDiveForge. Below is a side-by-side comparison of pricing, capabilities, platforms, and ownership — sourced from each tool's live website and verified before publishing.

AgentMeter

AgentMeter runs locally — no cloud sync, no account creation, no vendor dashboard to log into — and parses the tool calls, token counts, and caching splits that CLI agents like Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Codex CLI, and Copilot CLI generate. It surfaces the three-tier cost structure that prompt caching creates (input, cached-input, and output tokens each priced differently), which the raw API bill flattens into noise. The value-multiplier calculation compares API spend against estimated developer time saved, giving you a number to put in front of a manager. The wall appears when you need alerting, real-time budget enforcement, or integration with a team billing system — none of that is here.

burnban

Burnban reads supported agent log files already sitting on disk, prices the recorded usage against public API list rates, and lets you set daily, weekly, monthly, or per-agent spend caps enforced in the request path — all from a local dashboard at localhost:4141. The ledger is SQLite on your machine. No keys leave to a Burnban server, no prompts hit a control plane, no account is required. The sharp edge is the word 'supported': log format and provider coverage are scoped, and anything outside that scope remains invisible to the meter. Teams tracking unsupported agents or providers find Burnban shows them a partial picture.

Attribute	AgentMeter	burnban
Pricing	Free	Free
Free trial	No	No
Open source	Yes	Yes
Has API	No	No
Self-hosted option	Yes	Yes
Platforms	macOS, Linux, Windows (Python)	macOS, Linux, Windows
Pros	Runs entirely on-device with no account, no cloud sync, and no vendor access to your session data, so usage patterns and project names never leave your machine. Breaks prompt-caching costs into the three actual billing tiers (input, cached-input, output), so you can see whether your caching strategy is paying off instead of inferring it from a flattened total. Per-session and per-project cost aggregation across Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Codex CLI, and Copilot CLI, which means you get a unified spend view instead of hunting across four separate dashboards. Value-multiplier calculation compares API spend against estimated developer time saved, so you have a concrete number when someone asks whether the agent usage is worth the invoice. Open-source under Apache-2.0, so you can audit exactly what it reads and how costs are calculated — no black-box pricing assumptions you have to take on faith.	Zero-telemetry local enforcement, so your API keys, prompts, and responses never touch a Burnban server — eliminating the trust risk that comes with cloud-based spend gateways. Daily, weekly, monthly, and per-agent spend caps enforced in the request path, so a runaway agent gets blocked before it runs up the bill rather than flagged after the invoice arrives. The subsidy repricing command converts historical log data into a qualified, shareable cost estimate against any supported model's public rates, so you can surface the real cost of local agent activity to stakeholders without needing provider-side billing access. MIT licensed single binary with checksum verification and published SBOMs, so teams with strict supply-chain policies can audit exactly what sits in their provider request path. Local SQLite ledger requires no account, signup, or cloud dependency, which means the tool keeps working when a vendor changes pricing, shuts down, or decides to monetize the data flowing through their gateway.
Cons	There are no budget caps or threshold alerts. A session can exhaust your API credits before AgentMeter reports on it — the tool tells you what happened after the fact, not while it is happening. Teams that need spend enforcement have to wire up separate controls at the API key or infrastructure level. No shared or multi-user view exists. If two developers are both running Claude Code on the same project, their session data stays on their own machines. Teams that need consolidated spend reporting across contributors cannot get it here and will move to a vendor-native dashboard or a shared cost-tracking layer instead. Support is limited to CLI agents (Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Codex CLI, Copilot CLI). If your stack includes API-direct integrations, LangChain pipelines, or custom agent frameworks, AgentMeter produces nothing — you are back to reading raw API logs.	Enforcement only applies to traffic routed through the local meter — agents or apps that call providers directly bypass all caps entirely, so a team with more than one or two agents faces a partial blind spot from day one. Log reading and traffic enforcement are scoped to 'supported' agents and providers; the docs do not enumerate a complete compatibility list on the landing page, so teams discover unsupported tools by finding gaps in the dashboard rather than a checklist upfront. Because Burnban is a V0.4 single-maintainer project with no API surface and no integrations layer, teams that outgrow personal spend monitoring and need org-level cost allocation, multi-seat dashboards, or CI budget gates will find nothing here to extend — at that scale they migrate to a platform with an admin layer, and Burnban becomes a retrospective curiosity. The model repricing and subsidy features produce estimates explicitly qualified as 'API-equivalent' against list rates, not actual billed amounts — teams using negotiated pricing or credits will find the numbers systematically off, making the output useful for illustration but unreliable for finance reconciliation.

Bottom line

AgentMeter and burnban are closely matched on pricing model, openness, and API availability — pick by feature set and platform support in the table above.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between AgentMeter and burnban?

AgentMeter is Free and open source, while burnban is Free and open source. Compare pricing, free trial, API, platforms, and pros/cons in the table above on AIDiveForge.

Is AgentMeter better than burnban?

It depends on your workflow. Use the side-by-side attributes (pricing, open source, API, self-hosted, platforms) to decide. AIDiveForge does not rank a universal winner — we publish verified facts so you can choose.