Set Spend Limits

This guide walks through setting your organization's monthly budget, giving users their own limits, and choosing what happens when someone reaches one.

Who this is for: Global Admins
Where you'll be working: Organization Settings → Usage → Limits.

Before you begin

Make sure you have the following ready:

Global Admin access. Only Global Admins can set limits, change what happens at a limit, or decide increase requests.

Real numbers to work from. Spend is measured whether or not a limit is set, so the Overview and Users tabs already hold figures to base a budget on. Read them before you pick an amount. Limits take effect immediately and can be changed at any time, so a first pass does not have to be perfect.

Three figures decided before you start typing:

The organization's total for the month

The baseline a typical user should get

The exceptions few people who need more or less than that baseline

1. Open Usage & spend

Go to Organization Settings → Usage. The page opens on Overview, the organization's month at a glance.

The header carries three controls: the month picker, Export CSV, and Refresh. Check the month before reading any figure, limits you set apply from now on, but the spend on screen is for whichever month is selected.

The headline card shows spend against the limit; here $349 · no monthly limit, because no limit has been set yet; with the daily average, the reset date, and totals for tokens, sessions and users active.

Scroll for the rest of the cards:
Click on overview panel

Card	What it shows
Daily spend	One bar per day, so a spike is obvious at a glance.
Cost by assistant	Which assistants the money went to, ranked, with each one's token count.
Cost by model	Which underlying models the spend is made of, with tokens and cost.
Top users	The biggest spenders, with View all through to the Users tab.

2. Open the Limits tab

Select Limits. Everything in this guide except the per-user override is set on this tab.

The tab holds two cards:

Card	What it sets
Spend limits	The Monthly spend limit for the organization, and the Default user limit.
When a user reaches their limit	Whether reaching a personal limit pauses the user or only warns them.

A third card, Limit increase requests, appears above these when somebody has asked for more, see step 8.

3. Set the monthly spend limit

On the Spend limits card, next to Monthly spend limit, click Edit.

Enter the amount in Monthly limit (USD) and click Set spend limit.

Set this even if you intend to give everyone a per-user limit. It is a hard cap on estimated spend across the organization, and it is the only limit that stops everyone: per-user limits divide the budget up, but they do not cap the total.

To remove the cap, use Set to unlimited rather than clearing the field. Unlimited is shown in the row when no cap is in force.

4. Set the default user limit

Still on Spend limits, click Edit next to Default user limit.

This one applies to every user without a custom limit, so in most organizations it is the limit that governs almost everybody. Setting a sensible default here is far less work than granting people individual limits one at a time, and far easier to change later.

Once both are set, the card shows the amounts in place of Unlimited

5. Give an individual user their own limit

Per-user limits are not set on this Limits tab. Open the Users tab, which lists everyone with their sessions, tokens, spend, how much of their limit is used, and their status.

Click the user's name to open their detail page, then click Edit limit.

Enter the amount in Spend limit (USD) and click Set limit. This overrides the organization's per-user default for that person only.

Give a per-user limit only to the people who genuinely differ from the baseline, a power user who needs more, a contractor who needs less.

Using Set to unlimited here creates a personal limit that happens to be unlimited, and it still overrides the default. If what you want is to put someone back on the default, remove their personal limit.

The monthly spend limit still applies. A user set to unlimited is not exempt from it, they stop with everyone else when the organization reaches its total.

6. Choose what happens when a user reaches their limit

On the When a user reaches their limit card, pick one of the two options. It applies to queries performed by the user.

Option	What the user experiences
Block until reset	The user is paused until their monthly limit resets. They can request an increase, which lands on this tab for approval.
Warn only	The user sees a warning but can keep going. Overspend still counts against the organization spend limit.

A. Click on Limits B. Select an option C. Select an option

This choice governs a user's own limit only. The monthly spend limit is a hard cap either way.

For this guide we will switch to Block until reset
Click on Switch to block

7. Check the result on the Users tab

Go back to Users and read the Limit used and Status columns.

Status	Meaning
Active	Limit is in effect and yet to be reached.
Approaching	Spend is Approaching the limit.
Blocked	Spend has reached a limit that is being enforced.
No limit	The user has Unlimited set as Limit.

If somebody is already over the limit you just set, they will show as blocked straight away. That is expected, the limit is compared against the spend already recorded this month, not only against spend from here on.

8. Decide a limit increase request

When a user who has hit their limit asks for more, the Limits tab gains a count badge and a Limit increase requests card appears at the top.

Each request shows who filed it and when, the change being asked for ($20.00 → $50.00, with the difference beside it), the note they wrote, and their spend and session count for the month, so you can decide without leaving the tab.

Click Deny, or Approve for the amount shown.

An approval replaces the ceiling, it does not add to it. A user on a $50 limit approved for $65 has a $65 limit for the month, not $115.

And it expires at the reset. The grant applies for the rest of this month only; next month the user falls back to their standing limit. If the raise should be permanent, set their per-user limit as in step 5.

Best practices

Set budgets from the dashboard, not from estimates. The Overview and Users tabs show what your organization is actually spending. Work from those figures, and revise them as the picture changes, a limit can be edited at any time.

Always set the monthly spend limit. It is the only hard cap. Per-user limits divide the budget between people; they do not stop the total from growing.

Prefer the default over many per-user limits. One default plus a handful of deliberate exceptions is easier to reason about, and far easier to change, than dozens of individual limits.

Use increase requests for one-off overruns, per-user limits for permanent ones. An approved increase disappears at the month reset by design. If you find yourself approving the same person every month, raise their standing limit instead.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely cause	What to do
Nobody is ever paused although spend is over the limit.	Warn only is selected on the When a user reaches their limit card, which warns and lets people carry on.	Choose Block until reset if the limit needs to be held.
A user set to unlimited is blocked anyway.	The monthly spend limit was reached. It is a hard cap, and no per-user limit exempts anyone from it.	Raise the monthly spend limit, or wait for the month reset.
A user is still blocked after you raised their limit.	Their spend for the month is at or above the new limit too.	Raise it further, approve an increase request, or wait for the reset.
A user can't file an increase request.	They already have one pending this month.	Decide their open request.
An approved increase vanished.	Grants apply only for the month they were granted in.	Set that user's per-user limit for a permanent raise.

Before you begin#

1. Open Usage & spend#

2. Open the Limits tab#

3. Set the monthly spend limit#

4. Set the default user limit#

5. Give an individual user their own limit#

6. Choose what happens when a user reaches their limit#

7. Check the result on the Users tab#

8. Decide a limit increase request#

Best practices#

Troubleshooting#