Cost Explorer for Claude Code

See every Claude dollar.Then cut the billin half.

Start for free
Who and what drives spend
Break spend down by developer, repository, branch, ticket and model. No manual tagging.

Spend by repository

Total$18,932
  • northwind/api$6,240.00
  • northwind/web$4,810.00
  • northwind/mobile$3,120.00
  • northwind/infra$2,090.00
  • Other (5)$2,672.00

Spend by developer

  • alice@northwind.dev$4,210.00 / $3,800.00
  • ben@northwind.dev$3,560.00 / $3,800.00
  • chloe@northwind.dev$2,980.00 / $3,800.00
  • diego@northwind.dev$2,540.00 / $2,800.00
  • erin@northwind.dev$1,870.00 / $3,000.00
Spend over time
See actual spend and what Lineman saved, day by day, the moment activity lands.

Spend over time

Actual spend and what Lineman saved, per hour across a day

SpendSaved by Lineman
Spend alerts
Get flagged on unauthorised repos, out-of-hours work and budget breaches, with the cause attached.
Unauthorised repository

northwind/secrets-archive

This repository is not on the authorised list.

Developer
alice@northwind.dev
Window
Jun 15
First seen
15 Jun 2026, 02:15
$312.00
all of it unauthorised
Raised 15 Jun 2026, 02:31
Spend spike

Spend hit 6.5x baseline

Spend ran far above the recent baseline for this window.

Developer
alice@northwind.dev
Repository
northwind/secrets-archive
Model
claude-opus-4
Window
Jun 15
$312.00
against a $48.00 baseline
Raised 15 Jun 2026, 02:31
Out of hours

Spend outside working hours

This spend landed outside the configured working hours.

Developer
diego@northwind.dev
Window
Jun 14
First seen
14 Jun 2026, 23:40
$148.00
all of it out of hours
Raised 14 Jun 2026, 23:55
Budget

Over the monthly budget

Spend has passed the budget set for this period.

Period
June
Budget
$18,000.00
$18,932.00
$932.00 over $18,000.00
Raised 15 Jun 2026, 09:00
Forecast and budgets
Project month-end spend from run-rate and know before you breach a budget, not after.

Month-end forecast

Projected from current run-rate vs budget

Projected month-end$21,480
13.4%vs prev
Monthly budget$18,000
-vs prev

At this run-rate you will exceed the monthly budget in ~4 days.

Efficiency and savings
Cost per developer, per commit, per ticket, and the share of spend Lineman avoided.

Cost efficiency

Unit economics and Lineman savings

Cost / developer$789.00
Cost / commit$6.42across attributed commits
progress
45
Efficiency score · Fair$15,402.00 saved - the share of notional spend Lineman avoided this period.

Free plan, no credit card. 30-second install.

From the teams behind
New · Reporting connector

Ask Claude about your Lineman spend.

Connect the Reporting connector once, then anyone who watches the numbers (finance, managers, developers) can ask Claude about your usage, savings, and budgets in plain English. Straight from Claude Desktop or Claude Code, with no dashboard to learn.

  • “How much did Lineman save us last month?”
  • “Which repos used the most tokens this week?”
  • “Set our monthly budget to $2,000 and alert me at 80%.”
See how it works
Spend report
Using Lineman, can you report my spend last month?

Loaded tools · used Lineman Reporting

Here is your Lineman spend for last month:

  • Total spend: $18,932
  • Saved by Lineman: $3,878, about 41% fewer tokens
  • Heaviest repo: northwind/api

Want me to break it down by repo, developer, or cost centre?

Reply to Claude…
How it works

Same context to the model. Fewer tokens on the bill.

Lineman sits between your tools and Claude. It shrinks the heavy stuff and labels the spend, without changing a line of how your team works.

Claude Code
your input, tool outputs & file reads
Lineman
Step 01

Intercept

Hooks catch every Read, Bash, Grep and build output before it ever reaches Claude.

Step 02

Compress

A secondary LLM rewrites the noisy bulk into a tight summary: the same signal, a fraction of the tokens.

Step 03

Attribute

Every call is tagged from your git context: developer, repo, branch, ticket and model. No manual work.

Claude Code
same output, fewer tokens

Claude reads the same files and the same build results. You are simply billed for fewer tokens.

Governance, built in

Catch the spend that should not be happening.

Lineman watches every 15-minute bucket and flags the spend that matters: an unauthorised repository, work outside hours, a budget breach, or a sudden spike, each with the developer, repo and model that caused it already attached.

  • Unauthorised-repo detection, so secrets and side-projects don't burn budget unseen
  • Per-team and per-member budgets, daily, weekly and monthly
  • Out-of-hours flags tuned to each developer's timezone
  • Root-cause on every spike: who, where, which model
app.lineman.io/dashboard/cost-explorer/alerts
Unauthorised repository

northwind/secrets-archive

This repository is not on the authorised list.

Developer
alice@northwind.dev
Window
Jun 15
First seen
15 Jun 2026, 02:15
$312.00
all of it unauthorised
Raised 15 Jun 2026, 02:31
Spend spike

Spend hit 6.5x baseline

Spend ran far above the recent baseline for this window.

Developer
alice@northwind.dev
Repository
northwind/secrets-archive
Model
claude-opus-4
Window
Jun 15
$312.00
against a $48.00 baseline
Raised 15 Jun 2026, 02:31
Out of hours

Spend outside working hours

This spend landed outside the configured working hours.

Developer
diego@northwind.dev
Window
Jun 14
First seen
14 Jun 2026, 23:40
$148.00
all of it out of hours
Raised 14 Jun 2026, 23:55
Budget

Over the monthly budget

Spend has passed the budget set for this period.

Period
June
Budget
$18,000.00
$18,932.00
$932.00 over $18,000.00
Raised 15 Jun 2026, 09:00
Automatic attribution

From a session to a line of spend, instantly.

A developer just works. Lineman watches the calls, reads the git context, and resolves the whole session to one attributed figure. Zero manual tagging.

claude-code · northwind/api
alice@northwind ~/northwind/api (feat/billing)
$ claude
● Edit(src/billing/invoice.ts)
● Bash(pnpm test billing)
⎿ 24 passed
● Lineman · 8 calls · git context attached
app.lineman.io/dashboard/cost-explorer/activity
This session$12.34
developer
alice@northwind.dev
repo
northwind/api
branch
feat/billing
ticket
NW-412
model
claude-opus-4
Attributed automatically, 15-minute freshness
One standard, every editor

Bring Lineman to any MCP editor.

Shipping in Claude Code today. Cursor, Cline, Continue and Windsurf all speak the same open protocol, so Lineman travels with you.

  • Claude Code
  • CursorComing soon
  • ClineComing soon
  • ContinueComing soon
  • WindsurfComing soon
  • GitHub CopilotComing soon
Built on open MCP

No proprietary lock-in. Your editor, your workflow, your keys.

Install in 30 seconds

One line to install. Instant savings.

Drop Lineman into Claude Code and start cutting your token bill on the very next command. No prompts to rewrite, no workflow change.

  • Installs the plugin + CLI in one command
  • One-time browser sign-in, then nothing to manage
  • Compresses every large Read, Bash and Grep result
Start for free See supported editors
claude-code · ~/projects/northwind-api
❯npx -y @lineman-io/cli@latest setup
✓ Connected. Lineman is active.
❯claude "why did the build fail?"
●Bash(npm run build)- 2,041 lines
↳ saved 87% on Bash(npm run build) · 41,293 → 5,360 tokens
Everything in one install

Four jobs, one plugin.

Lineman compresses your spend, explains it, governs it, and keeps your sessions going. Pick a job to see how.

Compression

Compress the noise, keep the signal

Lineman trims large prompts, file reads and build output before they reach Claude, with no loss of meaning. You send fewer tokens and pay less.

  • Prompt compression
  • Smart file reading
  • Build and test triage
Before41,293 tok
After187 tok
99.5% saved on this call
Cost Explorer

See every Claude dollar, attributed

Every Claude Code call is tracked and attributed to a developer, repo and ticket in real time, with no manual tagging.

  • Per-repo and per-dev spend
  • Live activity feed
  • Month-end forecast
Total spend$18,932
11.4%vs prev
Saved by Lineman$3,878
8.7%vs prev
Governance

Catch the spend that should not happen

Lineman flags unauthorised repos, out-of-hours work and budget breaches, each with the developer, repo and model that caused it already attached.

  • Unauthorised-repo alerts
  • Per-team budgets
  • Root-cause on every spike
Unauthorised repository

northwind/secrets-archive

This repository is not on the authorised list.

Developer
alice@northwind.dev
Window
Jun 15
First seen
15 Jun 2026, 02:15
$312.00
all of it unauthorised
Raised 15 Jun 2026, 02:31
Continuity

Keep context past the compaction wall

Lineman summarises your session before Claude's native compaction, so long sessions hold on to far more of what matters.

  • Smart compaction
  • Longer working sessions
  • Fewer lost threads
Context windowcompaction wall
Session summarised and preserved past the wall
Security and compliance

Enterprise-grade by default.

You are handing Lineman the most sensitive thing you own: your source. So the safe choice is the default. Compression happens in memory, your code never trains a model, and every dollar of Claude Code spend is logged and attributable.

Start for free See the product

ISO 27001 + ISO 27701 accreditation in progress (SOC 2 to follow). Goo Holdings Ltd (England and Wales), trading as Lineman.

Security posture
Enforced
  • Memory-only compressionSource never persisted to disk
  • Never trains on your codeYour code is never sent to model training
  • EU data regionProcessing and storage stay in the EU
  • Encrypted in transitTLS on every call, end to end
  • Least-privilege accessScoped, fully attributed reads
  • Full spend audit trailExportable, per-developer and per-repo
FAQ

Everything you'd ask before you install.

The questions engineering leaders and developers raise most, answered up front.

Is there a free plan?

Yes. The Free plan needs no credit card and gives you the cost and spend reporting dashboard, tracking up to $1,500 per month of AI agent spend across your repos, tickets, and models. Paid plans add Lineman's token-saving tool (40%+ fewer tokens), team seats, and uncapped reporting. You can start a 14-day trial of a paid plan at any time.

Doesn't summarisation lose information the model needs?

Lineman never summarises blindly, every compression is task-aware: the secondary model sees what your model is working on and only drops content demonstrably unrelated to it. And it stays risk-free, because Claude keeps control. Whenever it judges a summary too thin for the task, it falls straight through to the full, verbatim output, so you never lose anything you actually needed. The false-drop rate sits at 0.4% across our benchmark suite.

What about privacy? Where does my code go?

Tool output is processed in memory only and discarded as soon as the response is returned. Nothing is logged, trained on, or persisted unless you opt in to telemetry.

Which clients does Lineman work with?

Today, Lineman works with Claude Code. Cursor, Cline, Continue and Windsurf are coming soon. Because they all speak the open MCP standard, support is mostly a matter of testing, and we only ship a client once we test it daily, which right now means Claude Code.

How do you count compressed tokens against my plan?

Only the input tokens that pass through Lineman count toward your monthly limit, Basic 100M / month, Pro 440M / month. We never count tokens we drop, and we never count the primary model's response tokens. You can watch the meter live in your dashboard.

What happens if I exceed my plan limit?

Compression keeps working, we never block your dev loop, but additional tokens are billed at a small per-million rate. If you're consistently over, switching plans saves money; the dashboard tells you when.

Free plan, no credit card

Drop it in. Watch your Claude bill drop by half.

One config line, works with Claude Code today. Most users see their first compressed call within 30 seconds.

Start for free See benchmarks
✓ No credit card✓ 30-second install✓ Memory-only processing
Start for free