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iStat Menus

The long-running Mac system monitor, sold outright rather than rented

Price: $11.99 once

Paid upgradesMajor versions cost again

Buy direct App Store

Price read on bjango.com, the page Buy direct opens.

The catch

Weather is a separate subscription once the six months included with a licence run out

The full picture

Direct licences include six months of weather; after that the forecast readout needs a subscription, listed on the App Store at $0.99 a month or $4.99 a year. Everything else is yours outright. Bjango charges for major versions — moving from 6 to 7 cost an upgrade fee, and version 8 will almost certainly work the same way — so this is a buy-and-own app with a paid upgrade every few years, not a one-payment-forever one. Fan control and some sensor readings are more limited on Apple silicon than they were on Intel Macs.

Pays back in
1 month
Seats
3 MacsThree Macs primarily used by you; the $14.99 Family Pack covers five Macs in one household
Developer account
None needed
Buy once$11.99Rent 5 years$540

$528 kept over five years, and you still have the app.
Against Setapp at $108 a year, Mac plan billed annually; $14.99/month if billed monthly. Also replaces Sensei at $29 a year.

What it looks like

iStat Menus: Dense collage (2400x1500) of iStat Menus 7's actual dropdown panels arranged around a centred "iStat Menus / The ultimate system monitor" title: weather with hourly forecast, CPU history graph with per-core rings and User/System percentages, memory pressure and memory rings with App/Wired/Compressed/Free, disk read/write graph with a Processes list, network up/down graph, sensors panel with CPU/GPU temps and FANS OFF, battery charge and health rings, and a calendar panel.
Dense collage (2400x1500) of iStat Menus 7's actual dropdown panels arranged around a centred "iStat Menus / The ultimate system monitor" title. Mac App Store (itunes lookup id 6499559693, screenshotUrls)
iStat Menus: Four real dropdown panels (2400x1500) labelled Weather, CPU & GPU, Memory and Disks, each shown in full — 18.1 degrees Sydney forecast with hourly row; CPU graph with efficiency/performance core rings and a Processes list; memory pressure/usage rings with App/Wired/Compressed/Free and top processes; Macintosh HD with read/write graph and per-process I/O. Marketing headline across the top.
Four real dropdown panels (2400x1500) labelled Weather, CPU & GPU, Memory and Disks, each shown in full — 18.1 degrees Sydney forecast with hourly row; CPU graph with efficiency/performance core rings and a Processes list; memory pressure/usage rings with App/Wired/Compressed/Free and top processes; Macintosh HD with read/write graph and per-process I/O. Marketing headline across the top. Mac App Store (itunes lookup id 6499559693, screenshotUrls)
iStat Menus: Four more dropdown panels (2400x1500) labelled Network, Sensors, Battery and Date and time: upload/download graph with Wi-Fi and IP addresses; a temperature list (AirPort, Airflow, Battery, CPU efficiency/performance cores, Graphics, Palm Rest, SSD) and fan speeds; battery charge/health rings with a charge-history graph, Energy Mode and "Using significant energy"; and a month calendar with an event, moon phase and world clocks.
Four more dropdown panels (2400x1500) labelled Network, Sensors, Battery and Date and time. Mac App Store (itunes lookup id 6499559693, screenshotUrls)
iStat Menus App Store screenshot 1 of 3
iStat Menus App Store screenshot 2 of 3
iStat Menus App Store screenshot 3 of 3

3 screenshots published by the developer on the Mac App Store.

Images belong to their developers.

What you’re buying

iStat Menus has been the standard answer to "what is my Mac actually doing" since the PowerPC era, and version 7 is a rewrite rather than a fresh coat of paint. You choose which readouts sit in the menu bar — processor load, GPU, memory pressure, disk activity, network throughput, temperatures, fans, battery — and each one opens a panel with history graphs and the processes responsible for the spike you just noticed.

$11.99 buys a single licence from Bjango or Apple. $14.99 covers up to five people in a household, which is the better deal for almost anyone with more than one Mac in the house. Owners of version 6 paid $9.99 to move to 7, and that is the shape of the arrangement: you own what you bought, and a new major version every few years asks for money again.

The weather module is the part that annoys people. A licence includes six months of it, after which the forecast wants $0.99 a month. Every sensor, graph and menu bar readout is unaffected.

If all you want is CPU and memory numbers in the menu bar, Stats does that for free and does it properly. What the money buys here is the presentation, the depth of configuration and the family licence.

What owners report

Points that recur across the discussions below. A report of what users say, not our verdict: we don’t review software.

Praised

  • Buyers repeatedly single out the licence: a cheap one-off purchase with a paid major upgrade every few years is the arrangement people say they wish more Mac software used
  • Owners say the always-visible menu bar readouts are the point, and beat opening Activity Monitor to answer the same question
  • More than one person credits it with catching real problems — thermal behaviour, power draw, what was actually causing a slowdown
  • The look of it comes up on its own: several posters describe the panels and graphs as the nicest presentation of this data on the Mac

Criticised

  • Several posters ask why a system monitor ships a weather module at all, subscription or not
  • Version 6 owners report the version 7 redesign lost ground: circular graphs showing less in more space, history not carried over, coarser fan control — a few reverted or sat the upgrade out
  • More than one person says the free, open-source Stats covers what they actually look at, and they see no reason to pay

Details

The price in full

$11.99 for a single licence, direct from Bjango or on the Mac App Store. The Family Pack covering up to five family members is $14.99, and owners of iStat Menus 6 pay $9.99 to upgrade. Also included with a Setapp membership, which is $14.99/month or $107.88 a year for the Mac plan.

The iStat Menus page at bjango.com
The developer’s own page. bjango.com, captured 22 Sep 2026
Free trial
Yes
Works offline
Partly
Apple Silicon
Native
Minimum macOS
not stated
Developer
Bjango

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