💸 copilot-cost

See your GitHub Copilot CLI tokens and estimated spend at a glance — right in your terminal.

⚠️ Unofficial. This is a community project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by GitHub. It reads the OpenTelemetry traces the GitHub Copilot CLI already emits — nothing more.

A zero-config statusline + local dashboard that turns Copilot CLI's OpenTelemetry traces into a real-time, model-aware view of your token usage and estimated spend — without your data ever leaving your machine.

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🚀 Install

Prerequisite: update the GitHub Copilot CLI to the latest version first — older releases may not emit the OpenTelemetry spans this tool depends on.

The package is not published to a registry yet. Install it locally from this repository.

git clone https://github.com/devartifex/copilot-cost.git
cd copilot-cost
npm run setup       # installs deps, builds, links the `copilot-cost` command, runs install + doctor

Prefer manual control? The equivalent steps are npm install && npm run build && npm link && copilot-cost install.

Then restart your shell and restart copilot. That's it.

The installer configures the Copilot CLI statusline (including the required "experimental": true flag in ~/.copilot/settings.json — the GitHub Copilot CLI gates custom status lines behind that flag), appends an idempotent OpenTelemetry block to your shell profile, and enables local JSONL span output under ~/.copilot/otel/. It does not start the dashboard.

Prefer to edit your shell profile yourself? Run copilot-cost install --no-otel-profile — the OpenTelemetry block is printed for manual setup.

Verify any time with:

copilot-cost doctor

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🎨 Statusline

Three styles, controlled by COPILOT_COST_FORMAT:

Format	Aliases	Example
standard	default	$1.2522 · 1.5M in / 7.9k out · 1.5M cache
compact	minimal	$1.2522
full	verbose	$1.2522 (125.22 aic) · 38.4k fresh / 1.4M cache rd / 62.1k cache wr / 7.9k out · Σ 1.5M · 1.6k reason

export COPILOT_COST_FORMAT=compact

Other knobs:

• COPILOT_COST_NO_COLOR=1 (or NO_COLOR=1) — plain output.
• COPILOT_COST_COLOR=<ansi-code> — change the statusline color.
• COPILOT_COST_HIDE_ZERO=1 — hide the zeroed placeholder shown before the first response.

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📊 Dashboard

copilot-cost dashboard

Binds to 127.0.0.1 by default and shows lifetime / today / week / month totals, token & cost trends, per-session and per-model breakdowns, pricing status, setup health, and CSV export.

☀️ Light	🌙 Dark

Use --port, --host 127.0.0.1, or --no-open as needed.

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✨ Why copilot-cost?

• 🔭 Zero-blindspot — cost and tokens visible on every prompt, not at the end of the month.
• 🔌 OpenTelemetry-native — no monkey-patching, no proxy, no auth.
• 🔒 100% local — usage data never leaves your machine; the dashboard binds only to 127.0.0.1.
• 🧠 Model-aware — separate accounting for input / output / cached / reasoning tokens.
• 🪶 Lightweight — no runtime database, no daemon, no analytics.

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🧬 How it works

The Copilot CLI has built-in OpenTelemetry instrumentation. With a few env vars set, every prompt, tool call, and model response is recorded as a trace span — including token counts and the model that handled it.

GitHub Copilot CLI ──OTel spans (JSONL)──▶ ~/.copilot/otel/copilot-otel.jsonl
                                                      │ tail + parse
                          ┌───────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────┐
                          ▼                                                       ▼
                 statusline (render)                                  dashboard (local web UI)

1. Capture — the installer adds three env vars so the Copilot CLI writes spans to a JSONL file:

   export COPILOT_OTEL_ENABLED=true
   export COPILOT_OTEL_EXPORTER_TYPE=file
   export COPILOT_OTEL_FILE_EXPORTER_PATH="$HOME/.copilot/otel/copilot-otel.jsonl"

2. Aggregate — on every render, recent spans are read, gen_ai.usage.* counters and gen_ai.request.model are extracted, and rolled up by session / model / day.
3. Price — token counts are multiplied by a bundled pricing snapshot (refreshable from Copilot models & pricing) to produce an estimated USD cost.
4. Render — a one-line statusline, plus an optional local web dashboard.

More on the underlying telemetry pipeline: Copilot OpenTelemetry observability.

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🔒 Privacy

• ✅ Usage data stays on your machine.
• ✅ The dashboard only supports local binds (127.0.0.1 or localhost).
• ✅ This package emits no telemetry or analytics of its own.
• 🌐 Pricing refresh contacts docs.github.com only when requested or when the cache needs refreshing.

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🛠️ Commands

Command	What it does
render	Render the statusline from Copilot CLI status JSON on stdin (default command).
install [--yes] [--no-otel-profile]	Install the statusline and (unless opted out) append local OpenTelemetry shell profile settings.
uninstall [--yes]	Remove settings installed by this package when they point at this tool.
doctor	Check statusline setup, OpenTelemetry output, pricing, and dashboard readiness.
dashboard [--port <n>] [--host <h>] [--no-open]	Serve the local dashboard.
refresh-pricing [--force]	Refresh model pricing; --force bypasses the cache TTL.

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🩺 Troubleshooting

• The statusline does not appear. Run copilot-cost doctor. The custom statusline requires "experimental": true in ~/.copilot/settings.json — without it the GitHub Copilot CLI ignores the statusLine block entirely (its logs show STATUS_LINE: false). Re-running copilot-cost install sets both keys; then restart Copilot CLI.
• No usage shows up yet. Make sure you're on the latest Copilot CLI, restart your shell and copilot, send a prompt, then check for JSONL files in ~/.copilot/otel/.
• I do not want profile edits. Use copilot-cost install --no-otel-profile and paste the printed OpenTelemetry block into the shell profile you choose.
• The dashboard will not bind. Use a local host only, e.g. copilot-cost dashboard --host 127.0.0.1 --port 4567.
• Pricing looks stale. Run copilot-cost refresh-pricing --force.

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🧪 Development

npm install
npm test
npm run build

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📚 More

• CHANGELOG.md — release notes.
• GitHub Copilot CLI docs · Copilot OpenTelemetry observability · Copilot models & pricing

📄 MIT — see LICENSE. Not affiliated with GitHub.