See where your Cursor AI budget goes — and stop expensive chats before they run away.
Cursor Spend Insights is a Cursor / VS Code sidebar that turns opaque usage into clear spend, sessions, and actionable next steps. Costs come from Cursor’s own usage API (chargedCents) — not guessed local pricing.
Why install it
Most usage meters only show requests left or total spend. This extension answers the question that actually saves money:
Which chat is burning my money, and should I reset context?
| You get | Instead of |
|---|---|
| Spend by model, repo, and session | One opaque total |
| Context-bloat warnings | Silent expensive threads |
| Budget + per-request alerts | Surprise overages |
| “What changed today?” | Digging through dashboards |
Features
Daily insights & recommendations
- What Changed Today — spend, tokens, and requests vs the same UTC window yesterday
- Recommended next step — evidence-backed tips (e.g. start a new chat when context balloons, review a model that dominates spend)
- Honest labels: observed usage vs inferred from session pattern
Budget & alerts
- Personal spend / budget progress for the selected window
- Alert threshold when a single request exceeds your limit
- Configurable in Cursor Spend Insights Settings (also via Command Palette)
Attribution that matches how you work
- Model — cost and request counts per model
- Type — inferred surface (Agent/Chat, Composer, Auto, Background)
- Tokens — input / output / cache composition + cache hit rate
- Repo — mapped from local chat transcripts (not “whatever folder is open”)
- Sessions — top conversations by cost, with context-bloat flags
Status bar
A live ticker shows today’s model and spend. Click it to open the sidebar.
Install
- Open the Marketplace listing
or search Cursor Spend Insights in Cursor / VS Code Extensions. - Install and reload if prompted.
- Sign in to Cursor on this machine (the extension reads your local session — no cookie paste).
- Open the Cursor Cost Tracker activity-bar view (or click the status-bar item).
- Click Sync with Cursor API.
Requirements
- Cursor (or compatible VS Code host) with an active signed-in account
- Network access to Cursor’s usage API
- Local
sqlite3CLI for reading the Cursor session database (macOS / most Linux installs include it)
Settings
Open via Command Palette: Cursor Cost Tracker: Open Settings
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Budget (USD) | Personal spend target for the selected window |
| Budget warning % | When to surface a budget warning |
| Alert threshold (USD) | Warn on expensive single requests |
| High-cost notifications | Enable / disable toast alerts |
| Context-bloat thresholds | Input tokens, request $, context growth sensitivity |
Budget is a personal target, not Cursor’s official billing-cycle limit.
Privacy
- Uses the Cursor session already on your machine
- Does not upload prompts or transcripts to a third-party service
- Repo mapping stays local via
~/.cursor/projects/*/agent-transcripts - Session token never leaves the extension host into the webview
Honest limits
Cursor’s usage API does not expose official Composer / Chat / Inline Edit labels or true repo fields. This extension:
- Infers product surface from model / headless flags
- Maps repos from local transcripts where possible
- Never invents ROI or “hours saved” metrics
Links
For contributors and AI agents working on the codebase, see AGENTS.md and docs/.
License
MIT © Deepesh Kumar