What is Budget Cap?
A hard limit on token or dollar spend that blocks LLM requests once the threshold is reached.
A budget cap is a hard constraint that prevents an application from exceeding a defined spending limit on LLM API calls. Unlike soft alerts (which notify you after the fact), a budget cap actively blocks requests once the limit is hit — ensuring zero overage.
Budget caps can be set per project, per user, per API key, or globally. They can be defined in tokens (e.g., 1M tokens/month) or in dollars (e.g., $50/month). When the cap is reached, the LLM request is blocked before it reaches the provider — no tokens are consumed, no cost is incurred.
GateCtr's Budget Firewall implements hard caps with configurable soft alerts (e.g., notify at 80% usage). This is the primary feature on the Free plan and the most direct way to eliminate surprise invoices.
GateCtr addresses budget cap automatically on every API call — no configuration required. The results are visible in real-time in the GateCtr dashboard, with per-request breakdowns of tokens, cost, and savings.