iStat Menus and Stats alternatives: which system monitor for your Mac?
In short: StatBar is the only app in this comparison that is free, on the Mac App Store and built into the menu bar.
CPU, memory, disk, network and battery one click away, with no account, no telemetry and no admin password.
What makes StatBar different
- Nothing leaves your Mac. No account, no server, no telemetry, no network requests: every reading stays on your machine.
- No helper, no password. StatBar is a sandboxed Mac App Store app: nothing privileged to install.
- Built for Apple silicon. Load is split between performance and efficiency cores, with a gauge for every core.
- Memory that finally makes sense. App, Wired, Compressed and Cached, memory pressure and swap, so you see at a glance why your Mac slows down.
- Battery in detail. Health, cycle count, capacity in Wh, charging or discharging power and adapter wattage.
- Native and light. 100% Swift, Apple frameworks only, sampling in the background at low priority.
The comparison at a glance
| StatBar | iStat Menus 7 | Stats | Activity Monitor | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | $11.99 | Free | Built into macOS |
| In the menu bar | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| On the Mac App Store | Yes | Yes | No (GitHub, Homebrew) | Built into macOS |
| No network requests | Yes | No (weather, public IP) | No (automatic updates, public IP) | — |
| No subscription | Yes | No (weather subscription) | Yes | Yes |
| Memory pressure and swap | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Battery health and cycles | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
Focused on what matters
StatBar stays inside the Mac App Store sandbox and sticks to the essentials: it doesn’t show CPU temperature in degrees, fans, GPU or a process list. To find out which app uses what, Activity Monitor, already on your Mac, does the job well.