Looking for a coconutBattery alternative?

Updated 23 August 2026 · competitor facts re-checked on that date · disclosure: WattMate is our app, and for some jobs the honest pick isn't us. coconutBattery reads iPhone and iPad batteries over a cable, which we do not. Everything said here about coconutBattery comes from their own page, checked on that date.

coconutBattery has earned its two decades. Since 2005 it's been the Mac's household thermometer for battery health. Their own page describes it as showing "live information about the battery in your Mac and iOS devices (iPhone, iPad)". The app is free, with a paid Plus upgrade. If you open it twice a year to check whether the battery is aging normally, it does that job with a long, trusted record.

The search for an "alternative" usually starts when the thermometer stops being enough: when the health number says one thing and your afternoon says another.

The gap: health says "fine", the battery still doesn't last

The most common battery complaint on a Mac isn't "my capacity is degraded". It's "health says 96%, so why am I barely making it to 2 PM?" A health snapshot can't answer that, because the answer isn't in the battery but in what's running. Answering it takes a different kind of tool:

• Power by app, in watts: live, ranked, with helpers grouped under the app they belong to.
• The price of a fix, in minutes: "quit this, get about 12 minutes back", and a re-measurement two minutes after you quit that prints what actually changed.
• Nights, explained: which service woke the Mac while the lid was closed, how many times, for how long. Read from the macOS power log, which the health readouts do not touch.
• History: this week against last week, so decline is a chart, not an anecdote.

WattMate also keeps the thermometer: battery health (capacity against design, cycle count, tracked monthly) is in the free part of the app, alongside the history macOS has been keeping since the machine's first day.

Side by side

Questions people ask

Why does coconutBattery show a lower health number than System Settings?

Because your Mac keeps two capacity figures and macOS displays the higher one, rounded. A tool reading the raw figure lands roughly two points lower. Both numbers are real. Our health checker prints them side by side so you can see the gap on your own machine.

Is coconutBattery free?

There is a free version with a paid Plus upgrade, as stated on their page. What the upgrade adds is described there rather than here, because their site is mostly images and we quote text rather than read screenshots.

Can I use both?

Yes. Neither app writes anything to the battery, and both read the same system counters, so they cannot conflict.

Does either one tell me what is draining the battery right now?

A health readout answers how large the tank is, not what is emptying it. That is the part we measure: watts per app, and what quitting one gives back. The measured costs are here.

The short version

Checking whether a used MacBook's battery is healthy before buying it? coconutBattery is the classic for a reason. Trying to find out why a healthy battery keeps emptying by mid-afternoon, and what quitting the right app is worth? That's WattMate's whole job, receipt included.

More comparisons: WattMate and AlDente · WattMate and Juicy · WattMate and TurtleBar

Related: health against cycles, on 1,539 measured pairs · why your Mac reports two different health numbers · is the seller's number plausible · all the comparisons