MeterTab vs UsageNow
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ with what reviewers say about each.
MeterTab
Read full descriptionHide full description
MeterTab puts your AI coding budget on your iPhone, Apple Watch, and Home Screen. See at a glance how much of your Claude, Codex, and Cursor budget you have left - before you hit a wall mid-task. WHY METERTAB AI coding assistants burn through 5-hour and weekly limits with no warning. MeterTab turns the usage the tools already log into a live budget you can plan around - synced from the MeterTab Mac app to your iPhone and Watch over your own private iCloud. WHAT YOU GET โข Live budget - 5-hour and weekly usage with time-to-reset countdowns. โข Answer your agents from anywhere - approve, deny, or pick an option when Claude Code asks, from your Mac, iPhone or Watch. โข See what every session is doing - which worktrees are busy, the command in flight, and the agent's own task list. โข iPhone & Apple Watch apps, Home Screen & Lock Screen widgets, and a Watch complication - your budget on every wrist and screen. โข Multi-provider - Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor in one place. โข Claude service status - on the main screen, in Settings, and on your widgets and complication, so an outage never looks like your budget running out. โข Per-model cost breakdown - see exactly which models are spending your budget. โข Activity heatmap + burn rate - spot your heaviest hours and how fast you are trending. โข Every number carries its source - Claude's own figure, measured, or estimated - so you always know what you are reading. โข Pay-as-you-go spend too - the API costs your Mac tracks from your own provider keys land here as well. โข Speaks your language: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil) and Chinese (Simplified) - with figures formatted for your region. FOR AGENTS: A BUDGET THEY CAN TALK TO MeterTab's Mac app runs a local MCP server, so your own AI agents can ask "how much budget is left?" and throttle themselves - downshift to a cheaper model, or pause - instead of failing halfway through a job. Your iPhone and Watch keep that same budget in your pocket. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No backend. No account required. No data collected. Any keys you give the Mac app stay in its Keychain, on that Mac. Your usage never leaves your devices - iCloud sync uses your own private iCloud database and carries only counts. FREE & PRO Free: the live gauge, threshold notifications, and up to 4 providers. Pro (one-time purchase, covers Mac + iPhone + Watch via Universal Purchase, with a 14-day free trial): the MCP server your agents can query, billing-key exact-dollar spend tracking, iCloud sync, the heatmap, burn rate, unlimited providers, and the iPhone & Watch apps. A NOTE ON ACCURACY Anthropic does not publish exact token limits, so the 5-hour and weekly percentages are estimates: your Mac works them out from its Claude Code logs, and they can differ a few percent from Claude's own usage screen. Calibrating on the Mac anchors them and carries across to here. If you connect your Claude account there, your iPhone and Watch show the exact figures too - every number is tagged so you can tell at a glance which kind you are looking at. MeterTab is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Anthropic, OpenAI, or Cursor. Product names are used only to describe compatibility.
UsageNow
Read full descriptionHide full description
Hit your AI limit halfway through a task? UsageNow shows how much of each AI plan you have left and exactly when it resets, right on your Home Screen, and warns you before you run out. Built for developers who code with AI agents every day. EVERY LIMIT AT A GLANCE Claude: the 5-hour session and weekly limits, including per-model weekly caps ChatGPT Codex: the 5-hour and weekly windows GitHub Copilot: premium requests, chat and code completions Gemini: daily request quotas for each model A live countdown to every reset, plus the exact reset time in your local format ALERTS BEFORE YOU HIT THE WALL Make your own alerts: choose the 5-hour limit, the weekly limit or all limits, then type the percentage that matters to you, like 90 or 98. Add as many as you like. Each alert comes once per limit and cycle, so your lock screen stays quiet. Turn on a reset alert to know the moment a limit is back. WIDGETS THAT DO MORE Flip through all of your accounts right on the widget Tap to refresh a widget whenever you want the latest numbers Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets in every size, plus Apple Watch complications ALL YOUR ACCOUNTS, IN YOUR ORDER Work and personal, Pro and Max, side by side. Sort by 5-hour reset, weekly reset, highest or lowest usage, name or service, or drag accounts into your own order. EVERYWHERE YOU WORK iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. PRIVATE BY DESIGN You sign in on each service's own login page. Your sign-in stays in your device's Keychain, and UsageNow talks only to the services themselves. There is no UsageNow server, no account to create and no tracking. IN YOUR LANGUAGE Fully translated into 50 languages, with dates and times written the way your region writes them. Pick a language in Settings anytime. TRY EVERYTHING FIRST Start a free 24-hour trial in the app and use every feature, widgets included; nothing is charged. Before and after the trial, one account's current usage is free in the app, and UsageNow Pro unlocks more accounts, widgets, Apple Watch and alerts with a single one-time purchase. No subscription. UsageNow is an independent app and is not affiliated with Anthropic, OpenAI, GitHub, Microsoft or Google. Claude, ChatGPT, Codex, GitHub Copilot and Gemini are trademarks of their respective owners. Questions or ideas? hourstag.app@gmail.com Optimized for iPhone Duo. Unfold it and use it in landscape, and the inner display switches to a two-column layout made for the extra space, instead of a stretched-out phone screen. Fold it back and the app carries on in its single-column layout on the outer display.
Screenshots
Verdict
MeterTab and UsageNow are too close to call on the numbers: across 6 compared parameters โ price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases among them โ neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.
Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS
Both are free to download. MeterTab sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and UsageNow sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
MeterTab ships an update every 6 days, UsageNow every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on October 30, 2026 and October 29, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | MeterTab | UsageNow |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Every 6 days | Every 5 days โ better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Devices | iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 17.0 |
| Further details โ not scored | ||
| Size | 19 MB | 15 MB |
| Age rating | +4 | 4+ |
| Developer | PETER DONGO | Guan Feng Lai |
In-app purchases
MeterTab
- MeterTab Pro$19.99
UsageNow
- 1-Day TrialFree
- UsageNow Pro$5.99









