iStat Menus
the long-running Mac system monitor, sold outright rather than rented
Paid upgrades
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.
Cost over five years
$12 once = 1 month of Setapp. Over five years that is $540 rented against $11.99 owned — $528 kept, and you still have the app.
Setapp priced at $108 a year — Mac plan billed annually; $14.99/month if billed monthly. Checked 2026-09-22.
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 it looks like
What it does
- Menu bar readouts for CPU, GPU, memory, disk, network, sensors, fans and battery
- Dropdown panels with history graphs and per-process breakdowns
- Detailed power reporting, including charge source and connected device batteries
- Fine control over how each menu bar item looks and which ones combine
- Family Pack licence covering up to five people
Cancel instead
Also bought outright in utilities
The facts
- Price
- $11.99
- What you get
- One payment, and the developer charges for major versions on a stated cadence.
- Details
- $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.
- Free trial
- Yes
- On Setapp
- Yes
- Minimum macOS
- not stated
- Developer
- Bjango
- Price checked
- 2026-09-22
Check it yourself - Price band
- Under $15