Comparison

cost-guardian vs Actual Budget

cost-guardian is no longer listed on any marketplace we read: these are its last known data, as of 2026‑11‑11.

cost-guardian is a plugin bundle for AI coding tools published by Manavarya Singh. No marketplace we read lists it any more. Actual Budget is an MCP server published by henfrydls. Marketplaces we read that list it: 2 (Official MCP Registry, npm registry (MCP servers)). As of our marketplace pass on 2026-11-14. A plugin in this pair is no longer listed on any marketplace we read, so search engines are asked not to index the page.

Where each is published

Where each is published
Marketplace	cost-guardian	Actual Budget
Community marketplace manavarya09/cost-guardian	Removed on 2026-11-11 Version: 2.0.0 Forks (GitHub): 2 Stars (GitHub): 40 Not marked · First seen 2026-10-27	Not listed
Official MCP Registry	Not listed	Listed Version: 0.12.0 Downloads/month (npm): 2 422 Downloads/week (npm): 304 Forks (GitHub): 1 Stars (GitHub): 20 Not marked · First seen 2026-10-11
npm registry (MCP servers)	Not listed	Listed Version: 0.12.0 Downloads/month (npm): 2 422 Downloads/week (npm): 304 Forks (GitHub): 1 Stars (GitHub): 20 Not marked · First seen 2026-10-12

Each figure is the marketplace's own and is never added up across marketplaces. A marketplace that publishes no figure shows none: no number is not zero.

The facts side by side

cost-guardian vs Actual Budget
Fact	cost-guardianno longer listed · 2026-11-11	Actual Budget
Marketplaces that list it (differs)	0	2
Stars (GitHub) (differs)	40	20
Forks (GitHub) (differs)	2	1
Last release (differs)	Not published	2026-11-04
Where it runs (differs)	Installs as a plugin bundle	On your machine (actual-budget-mcp)
Transport (differs)	Not stated	stdio
Tools it declares	Not published	Not published
Environment variables it asks for (differs)	Not published	20, secrets among them: 6
Parts of the bundle (differs)	4	Not a bundle
Licence	MIT	MIT
Repository (differs)	github.com/manavarya09/cost-guardian	github.com/henfrydls/actual-budget-mcp
Changes in the last 7 days (differs)	2	0
First seen (differs)	2026-10-27	2026-10-11

Lines where the two differ have a tinted background and bold values. No value is marked better or worse: a plugin no marketplace lists any more is shown with its last known data, which we do not rank against current figures.

What to use instead of cost-guardian

Plugins still listed whose own names, descriptions, tools and skills are closest in meaning to it. Comparable, not endorsed.

ccam-cost-guard

Budget tracking, spend forecasting, and cost-threshold alerts for Claude Code usage via the Agent Monitor pricing engine. Watches spend against a target budget, projects month-end…

by Son Nguyen · Plugin bundle

Listed on: Community GitHub marketplaces · Describes nearly the same job
ruflo-cost-tracker

Token usage tracking, model cost attribution per agent, budget alerts, and optimization recommendations

by ruvnet · Plugin bundle

Listed on: Community GitHub marketplaces · Describes nearly the same job
Bootlace AI SpendMap

Free-trial AI fleet spend meter. 100 calls or 14 days. No auth.

by mtardy90-sudo · MCP server

Listed on: Official MCP Registry · Describes nearly the same job
budgetclaw

Local spend monitor for Claude Code. Per-project, per-branch budget caps with SIGTERM enforcement.

by RoninForge · Plugin bundle

Listed on: Claude Code: claude-plugins-community · Describes nearly the same job
budget

AI Operations Team — Budget: LLM spend tracking, model cost optimization, budget alerts, and token efficiency audits across AI workloads.

by tonone-ai · Plugin bundle

Listed on: Community GitHub marketplaces · Describes nearly the same job
context-budget

Estimate per-turn token cost of your .claude/ configuration and CLAUDE.md. Always-loaded vs path-scoped vs invoked-only, with top contributors. Use --api for exact counts.

by poshan0126 · Plugin bundle

Listed on: Community GitHub marketplaces · Describes nearly the same job

Its card, with similar plugins by marketplace

What each says it does

cost-guardian

In its own words, on Community GitHub marketplaces:

Real-time cost tracking, budget guardrails, and spending reports for Claude Code sessions. Zero setup required.

Actual Budget

In its own words, on Official MCP Registry:

Actual Budget, carefully: deletes preview first, and new transactions check for duplicates.

How to run each

cost-guardian

No data for an automatic command: what its marketplaces declare does not say unambiguously how to connect it.

Actual Budget As a local MCP server: npm package

Claude Code

claude mcp add --env "ACTUAL_BUDGET_ID=<YOUR_ACTUAL_BUDGET_ID>" --env "ACTUAL_ENCRYPTION_PASSWORD=<YOUR_ACTUAL_ENCRYPTION_PASSWORD>" --env "ACTUAL_ENCRYPTION_PASSWORDS=<YOUR_ACTUAL_ENCRYPTION_PASSWORDS>" --env "ACTUAL_HTTP_TOKEN=<YOUR_ACTUAL_HTTP_TOKEN>" --env "ACTUAL_HTTP_WRITE_TOKEN=<YOUR_ACTUAL_HTTP_WRITE_TOKEN>" --env "ACTUAL_PASSWORD=<YOUR_ACTUAL_PASSWORD>" --env "ACTUAL_SERVER_URL=<YOUR_ACTUAL_SERVER_URL>" --env "ACTUAL_SESSION_TOKEN=<YOUR_ACTUAL_SESSION_TOKEN>" --transport stdio actual-budget-mcp -- npx -y actual-budget-mcp

Requires: ACTUAL_BUDGET_ID, ACTUAL_ENCRYPTION_PASSWORD (secret), ACTUAL_ENCRYPTION_PASSWORDS (secret), ACTUAL_HTTP_TOKEN (secret), ACTUAL_HTTP_WRITE_TOKEN (secret), ACTUAL_PASSWORD (secret), ACTUAL_SERVER_URL, ACTUAL_SESSION_TOKEN (secret)

Commands built only from what the marketplaces declare; the full set for every client is on each card.

Tools each declares

Neither one's marketplaces publish a list of tools, so there is nothing to compare.

Settings each asks for

The marketplaces of cost-guardian publish no settings it asks for, so we do not compare settings.

What it can do: cost-guardian · What it can do: Actual Budget · Compare two other plugins

Data comes from public marketplace files in GitHub repositories of their authors. Data comes from the Official MCP Registry (registry.modelcontextprotocol.io), CC0 1.0. Package data comes from the public npm registry (registry.npmjs.org). Figures come from our own regular passes over the marketplaces, last read on 2026-11-14. We publish no contact details for plugin publishers.