Real-time Cache Read and Cache Write Usage Data?
I'm migrating to Zed (from VS Code / Github), because there is so much to like! (https://www.reddit.com/r/ZedEditor/comments/1ta1xd0/me\_yaapyet\_another\_appreciation\_posting\_about\_zed/)
Among other benefits, I appreciate the informative usage/billing data (https://dashboard.zed.dev/.../billing/usage), which has opened my eyes to the importance of managing Cache Writes and especially Cache Reads.
I would love a tool that reports Cache Write and Cache Read data during a session.
For context, here is my usage from two trial sessions. In the first, I interacted with Opus (4 or 5 turns). In the second, I front-loaded Opus questions, responding to all in a single turn. Opus then completed the tasks (generating 2 howtos, with code snippets, and 1 analysis doc [re: Zed token usage]) without any further interactions. That economy shows up in the minimal Input tokens (7k) and modest Output tokens (60k).
But Input and Output are swamped (by orders of magnitude) by Cache Read and Cache Write, both in terms of tokens and charged costs.
| Token type | 2026-05-15 Tokens (K) | 2026-05-15 Cost | 2026-05-16 Tokens (K) | 2026-05-16 Cost |
| ----------------- | --------------------- | --------------- | --------------------- | --------------- |
| Input | 205 | $1.13 | 7 | $0.04 |
| Output | 152 | $4.18 | 60 | $1.66 |
| Input Cache Read | 21,551 | $11.85 | 12,044 | $6.62 |
| Input Cache Write | 1,000 | $6.88 | 316 | $2.17 |
| Totals | 22,908 | $24.04 | 12,427 | $10.50 |
| Charged | — | $23.98 | — | $10.44 |
At the end of the second session (12,427k tokens), the Zed "Context" UI (chat panel, bottom) showed "28% - 282k / 1M". These numbers seem almost fully irrelevant when it comes to the price paid for the LLM service.
What I most want is empirical data so I can learn how various models actually operate with specific prompts. The most valuable tool for me, for this task, would be a real-time Cache-useage report tool. I have read (some of) the manual, but I've not seen anything like this. Have I missed an easily available resource? Has someone built a Cache-usage extension? Is that even possible?
Thanks to everyone for putting in the work to build a clearly superior IDE. I look forward to its continued improvement.