head to head · open source
worldmonitor vs cost-xray
worldmonitor has 86,752 GitHub stars, 13,161 forks, 313 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cost-xray has 2,046 stars, 202 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped 18 days ago. worldmonitor leads on adoption by 4,140% (86,752 vs 2,046 stars). worldmonitor is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; cost-xray is written in Python under MIT. worldmonitor has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, cost-xray 10%. worldmonitor was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| worldmonitor | cost-xray | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 87K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 13K | ⑂ 202 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick worldmonitor if
- You weight community size — 87K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cost-xray if
- You want the cost-xray feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and cost-xray fits your workflow better
About worldmonitor
World Monitor is an open source, real time global intelligence dashboard in TypeScript that aggregates news with AI, monitors geopolitics and infrastructure, and unifies all of it into a single situational awareness interface for analysts, journalists, researchers, and operations teams who need cross domain awareness they can self host.
read the full worldmonitor overview →
About cost-xray
cost xray is an MIT licensed open source observability proxy for Claude Code and Codex that captures the API traffic those agents actually send and attributes every token and dollar back to the system prompts, tool schemas, MCP blocks, tool results, cache reads and writes, and thinking blocks that produced them.
read the full cost-xray overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is worldmonitor or cost-xray more popular?
worldmonitor has 86,752 GitHub stars and cost-xray has 2,046. worldmonitor has the larger community by that measure.
Are worldmonitor and cost-xray free?
Both are open source. worldmonitor is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and cost-xray under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between worldmonitor and cost-xray?
worldmonitor is written in TypeScript and cost-xray in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, worldmonitor or cost-xray?
Choose worldmonitor if you want the larger community (86,752 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose cost-xray if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.