Usage-based charges can move faster than anyone plans for: a busy week of calls, a large brain crawl, a campaign that lands better than expected. Spend limits let you set a ceiling on what your workspace can run up in usage charges within a billing period — either across everything, or on one service at a time.
A limit is a hard stop, not a warning. Once it is reached, the actions it governs are refused until the next period or until the limit is raised. That is the point: you decide the ceiling in advance rather than discovering it afterwards.
Fixed subscription fees are not counted toward a limit — only usage charges.
billing:read permission to see the limits, and billing:manage
to change them. The seeded Billing Admin role carries both; tenant
admins have every permission. A user with billing:read alone sees the same
figures with the fields locked.The Spend limits card is on your billing page. There are two ways in, and which one works depends on your role:
billing:read, including a Billing Admin who is
not a tenant admin.Both land on the same page. The card edits the current period only; select an earlier month from the period selector and the card is hidden, because a closed period cannot be re-capped.
Two limits can apply to the same spend:
| Layer | Who sets it | Shown as |
|---|---|---|
| Your limit | You, on this card | The Your limit column, and the account-wide field |
| The plan's ceiling | Your plan | The Plan limit column |
Where both apply, the tighter one wins. You can always lower your exposure below what the plan allows; you can never raise it above.
The card tells you which one is currently binding, in the line beside the usage bar:
Yours is tighter than the plan's $500.00 — yours applies.
The plan's $500.00 is tighter — it applies instead.
The second is shown in amber, because it means the number you typed is not the number in force. If you set a limit and the figure that binds is still the plan's, that line is where you find out.
When no plan ceiling is configured, the line is absent and your limit is simply the limit.
An account-wide limit applies to every usage charge together. Reaching it blocks all billable actions in the workspace.
The usage bar underneath then reads $X spent this period of $Y, and once the
limit is reached the card shows:
Limit reached — billable actions are being refused right now.
Because an account-wide limit stops everything, set it as a genuine ceiling — a figure you would not want the workspace to pass — rather than as a nudge. To constrain one kind of work, use a per-item limit instead.
The By service line item table lists the billable services separately, with what you have spent, the plan's limit, and your own.
When that row's limit is reached, only that service is refused — everything else carries on. The row shows:
Limit reached — these actions are being refused.
Most of the billable catalog is priced at $0 today. Those rows are hidden behind Show all items (N more), and when shown they carry the note "Bills at $0 today — a limit here can't take effect yet."
That is accurate rather than dismissive: a dollar limit on a service that costs nothing can never bind. A row that already carries a limit is never hidden, so you can always see and edit a limit you have set.
Clear the field and click Save limits. An empty field means no limit,
and the figure line changes to … · no limit in force.
Note the difference between an empty field and a limit of 0: 0 is a real
limit that refuses everything. If you want to remove a cap, empty the field
rather than zeroing it.
I set a limit but spending continued past it. Check the attribution line beside the usage bar. If it reads "The plan's $X is tighter — it applies instead", your figure is not the one in force. Also confirm you clicked Save limits — the button is disabled until something changes, and enabled again as soon as it does.
I can see the limits but the fields are greyed out.
You have billing:read but not billing:manage. The card says so directly:
"You can view these limits but not change them. Managing billing is a
per-role permission an admin can grant." Ask a tenant admin to grant
billing:manage, or to assign the Billing Admin role.
The Spend limits card isn't on the page. You are probably viewing an earlier billing period — the card edits the current period only. Return to the current period and it reappears.
A limit I set on one service seems to have stopped everything. Check the Account-wide limit block as well. The account-wide cap is evaluated first and refuses every billable action, so if both are set, that is the one to look at.
You are not left to watch the bar yourself. KarmaFlow raises an alert at 80% and again at 100% of a limit — separately for the account-wide cap and for each service line item that has one — so a limit about to bite is something you hear about rather than discover when work starts being refused.
Each alert fires once per limit per billing period.