Skip to main content

​
Overview

Budgets let Admins and Owners cap AI spend at both the organization and individual user level. Use them to prevent runaway costs, give new members sensible default limits, and adjust limits on a per-user basis as needs change.
Managing budgets requires Admin or Owner permissions.

​
Budget Types

OpenHands supports three complementary budget controls:
  • Organization Budget - A monthly spending cap for the entire organization, with alerts at defined thresholds.
  • Default User Budget - A budget automatically applied to new members when they join the organization.
  • User Budget Overrides - Per-user adjustments that raise or lower an individual’s budget.

​
Organization Budget

The organization budget defines the maximum amount your organization can spend on AI usage in a given month. When usage approaches or exceeds the cap, OpenHands notifies Admins and Owners.

​
Setting the Monthly Budget

  1. Hover over the profile icon in the lower left — an account menu will appear.
  2. Select Organization.
  3. Select the Budgets tab.
  4. Under Organization Budget, enter your monthly spending cap (e.g., $10,000).
  5. Click Save Changes.

​
Budget Alerts

Once a monthly cap is set, OpenHands automatically tracks organization-wide spend and sends alerts to Admins and Owners when usage reaches the following thresholds:
  • 80% of the monthly budget — early warning.
  • 90% of the monthly budget — approaching the cap.
  • 100% of the monthly budget — the cap has been reached.
When the organization reaches 100% of its monthly budget, new conversations may be blocked until the next billing cycle or until the budget is increased.
The budget resets automatically at the start of each calendar month.

​
Default User Budget

The default user budget is applied to every new member when they are added to the organization. This ensures new users cannot spend beyond a defined amount before an Admin reviews their usage.

​
Setting the Default Budget

  1. Hover over the profile icon in the lower left — an account menu will appear.
  2. Select Organization.
  3. Select the Budgets tab.
  4. Under Default User Budget, enter the amount every new member should start with (e.g., $500).
  5. Click Save Changes.
Default user budgets are currently lifetime budgets — they represent the total amount a user can spend from when they join until an Admin increases the limit. Monthly user budgets are on the roadmap.
New members added to the organization after this setting is saved will automatically inherit the default budget. Existing members are not affected.

​
User Budget Overrides

Admins and Owners can override an individual user’s budget at any time — for example, to raise a developer’s limit from $500 to $1,000 once they reach their default cap.

​
Adjusting a User’s Budget

  1. Hover over the profile icon in the lower left — an account menu will appear.
  2. Select Organization.
  3. Select the Members tab.
  4. Locate the user in the member list and open their row.
  5. Update the Budget field to the new amount (increase or decrease).
  6. Click Save Changes.
The new limit takes effect immediately. If the user was previously blocked by their old limit, they will be able to resume usage until the new limit is reached.

​
Monitoring Budget Usage

Budget usage is visible from the Organization settings page:
  • The Budgets tab shows the current organization-wide spend against the monthly cap.
  • The Members tab shows each user’s current spend against their individual budget.
For programmatic access to per-member usage data, use:
This endpoint returns the current spend for each member, which you can compare against their configured budget.

​
Next Steps