> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://tokonomics.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Set Budget Alerts and Hard Spending Caps in Tokonomics

> Set monthly budget thresholds so Tokonomics alerts you at 50%, 80%, and 100% of spend — or enforces hard caps on Pro to block overage.

Tokonomics gives you control over how much you spend on AI every month. You set a budget, choose where you want to be notified, and Tokonomics handles the rest — firing alerts as you approach your limit and, on Pro, refusing requests the moment you exceed it. Budget controls apply to your entire account's LLM spend routed through the proxy.

## Budget thresholds

Set your monthly budget in the Tokonomics dashboard under **Settings → Budget**. Once a budget is configured, Tokonomics tracks cumulative spend across all proxied requests for the current calendar month and fires an alert each time you cross a configurable threshold.

The default thresholds are **50%**, **80%**, and **100%** of your monthly budget. You can adjust these percentages to match your team's escalation policy — for example, adding a 90% threshold if you want an extra warning before hitting the cap.

<Note>
  Budget thresholds reset at the start of each calendar month. Mid-month budget changes take effect immediately against the spend already accumulated in the current month.
</Note>

## Alert channels

When a threshold is crossed, Tokonomics can notify you through any of the following channels. Configure them in **Settings → Alerts**.

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Slack" icon="slack">
    Post a message to any Slack channel using an incoming webhook URL.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Microsoft Teams" icon="microsoft">
    Deliver an alert card to a Teams channel via a Teams webhook connector.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Email" icon="envelope">
    Send an email to one or more addresses on your account.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Webhook" icon="webhook">
    POST a JSON payload to any URL — compatible with **n8n**, **Zapier**, **Make**, **Flowise**, and **LangFlow** for automated workflows.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

The webhook payload includes the threshold crossed, current spend, budget amount, and a timestamp, giving downstream automations enough context to act without a follow-up API call.

## Hard spending caps (Pro)

Pro plan accounts can go beyond alerts and enforce a **hard cap** that blocks further LLM requests once your monthly budget is exhausted.

When the hard cap is enabled and your spend reaches 100% of the configured budget, Tokonomics returns the following error for every subsequent proxied request until the month rolls over:

```http theme={null}
HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
Retry-After: <seconds until month reset>
Content-Type: application/json
```

```json theme={null}
{
  "error": "Budget cap reached",
  "message": "Monthly spending cap exceeded"
}
```

Your application should handle `429` responses from the Tokonomics proxy and surface a meaningful message to users rather than retrying immediately. The `Retry-After` header tells you exactly how many seconds remain until the monthly budget resets.

<Warning>
  Enabling a hard cap means your application will stop receiving LLM responses once the cap is hit — even for latency-sensitive or user-facing features. Test your error-handling logic in a staging environment before enabling hard caps in production.
</Warning>

## Free vs Pro

<Note>
  **Free plan** — Budget alerts via all supported channels. Hard spending caps are not available; requests continue after the budget threshold is crossed.

  **Pro plan** — Budget alerts plus optional hard spending caps that enforce a strict monthly ceiling.

  See the full comparison on the [Plans page](/reference/plans).
</Note>

To walk through setting up your first budget alert end-to-end, see the [Budget Alerts guide](/guides/budget-alerts).