Cost Lens for GitHub Copilot

Know exactly what your AI coding tools cost you — per repository, per model, per day. 100% local and private.

Cost Lens reads the logs that GitHub Copilot (VS Code Chat and the Copilot CLI) and optionally Claude Code already keep on your machine, attributes every request to the repository you were working in, prices it using the providers' model rates, and turns the result into a live dashboard, a tree view and a status-bar ticker.

Why

Since GitHub Copilot moved to usage-based billing (AI Credits), the question is no longer "how many requests did I make?" but "which project is burning my credits, on which model, and will I fit into my monthly allowance?" GitHub's billing page gives you an account-level total — Cost Lens gives you the per-repository breakdown it can't.

Features

• Cost per repository — every chat request is attributed to the workspace it ran in, resolved to a owner/repo slug via the project's git remote when available.
• All your AI tools in one ledger — VS Code Copilot Chat, GitHub Copilot CLI agent sessions and Claude Code transcripts, with a per-provider spend split. Claude Code never counts against your Copilot allowance — it's shown so you see the total AI cost of a project.
• Token anatomy — input, output, cache read and cache write tokens per repository, plus the exact models used and how often.
• Project drill-down — click any repository for a detailed view: model mix, daily trend, source split, token anatomy, first/last activity.
• All-time view — switch the period selector to All time to see everything since your logs began, not just one month.
• PDF receipts — export a classic printed-receipt PDF per project: model line items, token counts and the total you've poured into it. Great for invoicing, chargeback or framing on the wall.
• Localized — English, Čeština, Deutsch and 日本語, following your VS Code display language.
• Dashboard — monthly overview with spend, allowance gauge, end-of-month forecast, cost-by-repo chart, model donut, daily spend trend and a sortable repository table. Adapts to your color theme.
• Status bar — month-to-date credits and dollars at a glance; turns orange when you cross your warning threshold.
• Tree view — repositories ranked by spend with per-model breakdown, right in the activity bar.
• Budgets & alerts — pick your monthly allowance right in the dashboard (1,900 / 3,900 / 10k / 100k / 1M AIC or a custom number) and an optional dollar budget; get warned once a day when you cross the threshold.
• Forecast — linear end-of-month projection based on month-to-date spend.
• Export — one click to CSV or JSON for invoicing, chargeback or further analysis.
• Multi-installation — scans VS Code, VS Code Insiders, VSCodium, Cursor and Windsurf storage automatically; extra locations are configurable.
• Zero runtime dependencies — small, fast, auditable.

How it works

Cost Lens combines four local sources:

When both exact and estimated data exist for the same session, exact wins. Estimated entries are always marked (~est) in every view. Costs are computed as:

1. Billed units from the logs when present — AI-credit nano units (1 credit = $0.01) or premium requests ($0.04 each, pre-June-2026 Copilot billing),
2. otherwise exact tokens × model rate (built-in price table, USD per 1M tokens),
3. otherwise estimated tokens × model rate.

The built-in price table covers GPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and more, and every rate can be overridden in settings — so when GitHub updates pricing, you don't have to wait for an extension update.

Disclaimer: Cost Lens is an independent open-source project, not affiliated with GitHub or Microsoft. The log format is not a stable public API and numbers shown here are an analytical aid, not a bill. Your GitHub billing page remains the source of truth.

Privacy

Everything happens on your machine. Cost Lens:

• reads only local files under VS Code's workspaceStorage,
• makes no network requests, collects no telemetry,
• never executes git — repository names are read from workspace.json and .git/config as plain files.

Getting started

1. Install Cost Lens for GitHub Copilot from the Marketplace.
2. Set copilotCostLens.plan to your Copilot plan (defaults to Business).
3. Open the Copilot Cost Lens view in the activity bar, or run Copilot Cost Lens: Open Dashboard.

Data appears automatically as you use Copilot Chat. Historical sessions already on disk are picked up on first scan.

Settings

Commands

• Copilot Cost Lens: Open Dashboard
• Copilot Cost Lens: Refresh Usage Data
• Copilot Cost Lens: Export Usage as CSV / as JSON
• Copilot Cost Lens: Export Project Receipt (PDF)
• Copilot Cost Lens: Open Settings

FAQ

Numbers don't match my GitHub bill exactly. Expected. Sessions without exact token logs are estimated from content length, code completions are not in chat logs (they're included in paid plans anyway), and Copilot usage outside this machine (web, CLI, other devices) is invisible locally. Treat Cost Lens as a relative lens on where your usage goes.

I see ~est everywhere. Your Copilot Chat version isn't writing token-level transcripts yet. Estimates still give you a faithful relative picture across repos; exact data is used automatically the moment it appears.

Does it work with older "premium requests" billing? Yes — Copilot CLI sessions log the billed premium requests directly and Cost Lens prices them at $0.04 each; everything else falls back to token-based pricing. The AI Credits model (effective June 2026) is the primary target.

Why is Claude Code in a Copilot extension? Because the question you actually ask is "what does this repository cost me in AI tools?" Claude Code spend is tracked separately from the Copilot allowance gauge and can be disabled with one setting.

Development

npm install
npm run build        # bundle with esbuild
npm test             # vitest unit tests
npm run typecheck
npm run lint
npm run vsix         # package .vsix

Press F5 in VS Code to launch the Extension Development Host.

License

MIT