limitcast 0.17: Grok weekly usage percentage, off by default

Sam Stull · 27 October 2026

Until now limitcast could show what Grok cost you, but not how close you were to its limit. 0.17 adds Grok's weekly usage percentage. It is the first limitcast feature that uses a login, so it is off by default.

Run limitcast grok-usage on and Grok's weekly window is forecast like Claude's and Codex's. On my account it reads 9% used, resetting on Sunday at 19:34.

Why Grok had no percentage

Grok writes what each session cost to disk, not a share of your limit. So limitcast could show dollars, and could only forecast once you set a dollar cap with limitcast budget grok.

I first tried asking the Grok CLI itself. It speaks JSON-RPC over stdio, and its billing method, x.ai/billing, answers "Method not found" in Grok 1.0.70. The percentage is held by grok.com's billing service, so that is where limitcast asks. I found the call by reading how a usage monitor I already run gets the same number, and my figure matched its 9%.

What it does

$ limitcast grok-usage
Grok weekly: 9% used, resets 11/1/2026, 7:34:33 PM

$ limitcast status
window     used  burn     runs out   resets     today     status
grok 7d    9%    +0.0%/h  -          Sun 19:34  16% left  OK

About every 5 minutes, limitcast reads the login Grok keeps in ~/.grok/auth.json and asks grok.com for your billing cycle. The refresh runs in the background, so a status line never waits on the network. The login goes only to grok.com, a redirect to any other host is refused, and it is never stored or logged. The readings are kept in ~/.local/state/limitcast/grok-quota.json, which is what lets limitcast work out a burn rate.

The request identifies itself as limitcast. 0.17.0 sent a Grok client's User-Agent instead; 0.17.1 fixes that, and grok.com gave the same answer either way.

What it adds

• A grok 7d row in limitcast status, with runout time, reset and today's share, and the same figure on Grok's status line.
• The guard can hold a new Grok subagent when the weekly window is on pace to run out, as it does for Claude and Codex.
• A line in limitcast doctor: ✓ Grok weekly: 9% used (checked 0 min ago). If the login has expired or the reply changes, it says why instead.
• A weekly dollar cap from limitcast budget grok steps aside for the real percentage. A 5-hour cap still works as before.

It tracks weekly plans. If your plan reports monthly credits, limitcast shows the figure but does not forecast it.

Why it is off by default

limitcast's promise so far was that it reads files already on your machine. This feature sends a login to a server, which is a different kind of thing, so you turn it on yourself and limitcast grok-usage off turns it off again. It also depends on a billing endpoint that xAI can change. If that happens, doctor says "Grok usage unavailable" with the reason, and the dollar-cap forecast keeps working.

Measure your own numbers

npm install -g limitcast
limitcast grok-usage on
limitcast status
limitcast doctor

The guide has the rest, the 0.17.1 release has the tarball, and the 0.16 post covers the previous release.