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Budgets (Platform > AI governance > Budgets) caps spend on model calls. A call goes through only when every budget it belongs to has room left. Limits are in credits when your organization is billed in credits (1 credit = $0.01, with the dollar value shown), otherwise in USD. Periods are Day, Week (starting Monday) or Month. Calls on a person’s own Claude plan, and work xpander does for you that Logs marks Not billed, count toward no budget.

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What each budget covers

Budgets stack: a person’s budget and their group’s both apply. An agent’s call counts for the agent, the turn and the person who started the run. Every call counts toward the organization limit.

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Set the organization limit

In Overview, on Organization limit, choose Set limit (Edit once a limit is set), enter Limit per month (empty for none) and choose Save limit. When it is reached, requests stop. Overview also counts budgets over the limit, near the limit (75-99%) and under 75%. An account run by a main account shows an Account limit card. Only the main account’s admins change it, and the account’s own limit can only be lower.

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Add a budget

Add a group budget form with Group, Limit in credits, Every, When reached (Block or Notify only) and Email admins at

Adding a budget for a group: the limit, the period, what happens when it is reached, and when admins are emailed.

Under Spending limits by scope, pick a tab, choose Add budget, and pick who it is for (for an end user, the End user ID your app sends as user). Then set:
  • Limit and Every (Day, Week or Month).
  • When reached: Block stops calls until the period resets. Notify only lets usage continue.
  • Email admins at: 50%, 75%, 80%, 90%, 100%, once per period each.
Choose Save budget. A new budget starts as Month, Notify only, alerting at 50%, 75% and the full limit, so choose Block for a hard stop. On the Members tab, a new budget starts as Block. Each tab has a pinned Default budget for … row that applies to everyone without their own budget. Remove budget sends a row back to the default.

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Rate limits

Alongside a budget, a rate limit caps Requests/s, Tokens/s (input and output together) and At once (calls in flight), over a rolling 60 seconds. The minimum is 1 request and 100 tokens a second, and an empty field means no limit. Open it with Rate limit and budget in a row’s menu. Calls over the limit get 429 (Errors). If the menu shows only Set budget, rate limits are off for your organization: ask your xpander contact.

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Agent and turn budgets

These are set in each agent’s settings, under Advanced. Budget rules, opened from the top of the Budgets page, holds what they share: Maximum agent budget, Enforce agent, turn and member budgets (on by default; off means track only, never block) and Email alerts for agent, turn and member budgets.

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What people see at a limit

Notify only never refuses a call.

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Self-hosted installs

Hybrid and Air-Gapped installs enforce agent, member and organization budgets for agents on the install, with their own counters. A block holds even when the install can’t reach xpander cloud. Calls on your own keys count at the cost the gateway measures, matching Logs. Alert emails are sent from xpander cloud only.
  • Hybrid: budgets are set in the Platform and reach your install within seconds. Your install reports its spend, so cloud totals include it. People’s coding tools go through xpander cloud and are stopped there.
  • Air-Gapped: budgets are set and enforced entirely inside your install.

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Next steps

Fix a refused call

What 429 and 402 mean.

See what each request cost

Spend per request, person and agent.