# Set per\-user budgets on AI Gateway

**Published:** August 31, 2026 | **Authors:** Jeremy Philemon, Sam Chitgopekar, William Bout, Joe McKenney, Jerilyn Zheng

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You can now use [AI Gateway budgets](https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/observability-and-spend/budgets) to set a dollar spending limit for each user on your team.

The limit covers spend from every API key attributed to the user, along with their app tokens. After it's reached, AI Gateway rejects new requests until the budget resets or is increased.

This is useful for controlling spend from coding agents and other workloads that run without supervision, and prevents one user from consuming all of the team's shared budget.

![Track spend for every user against their budget from one overview.](//images.ctfassets.net/e5382hct74si/3AUmxuXWX0Ul6EfZ7mTsC1/44b52f257813cd91d2c7aa291f2ca4bd/cc33fe19-df22-4865-9f27-ed80836fc965.png)
*Track each team user's spend against their budget.*

### Set user budgets

Open the **Users** view on the [Budgets page](https://vercel.com/d?to=%2F%5Bteam%5D%2F%7E%2Fai-gateway%2Fbudgets%2Fusers&title=AI+Gateway+User+Budgets) to set two kinds of user budgets:

- **Default budget:** If set, applies separately to every person without a custom budget, including users added later. Each user gets their own allowance rather than sharing one limit across the team.
- **Custom budget:** Applies to one person and overrides the default. Removing it returns that user to the default budget.

![Set a custom user budget. It replaces the default user budget for that member, while the team budget still applies.](//images.ctfassets.net/e5382hct74si/1yG4UQe3HC8dd9lTbfk1CQ/7382cc22fc8a2f81bfc41e7ada7f2608/user-budget-web-light-final.png)
*Set a custom user budget. It replaces the default user budget for that member, while the team budget still applies.*

Both default and custom budgets reset monthly by default, but you can change them to reset daily, weekly, or not at all. Budgets also support usage alerting via email to notify when you are at 50%, 75%, and/or 100% of your allocation.

User budgets don't replace API key, project, or team budgets. A request must remain within every budget that applies to it. Reaching any applicable limit blocks new requests.

API keys are attributed to the user who created them by default. If a key belongs to a production application or another shared workload, attribute it to the team from the [API Keys page](https://vercel.com/d?to=%2F%5Bteam%5D%2F%7E%2Fai-gateway%2Fapi-keys&title=AI+Gateway+API+Keys) to keep its spend out of the key creator's budget. Keys created prior to the user budget feature release were attributed to the team for backwards-compatibility, so rotate to new keys if you wish to have current usage fall under the user scope.

### Set budgets from the CLI

Upgrade to the latest Vercel CLI with `vercel upgrade`. You need Vercel CLI 59.6.2 or newer for user budgets, then set a default or custom user budget:

```bash
# Set the default user budget to $50 per month
vercel ai-gateway budgets defaults set user --limit 50 --refresh-period monthly

# Set one member's custom budget to $100 per month
vercel ai-gateway budgets set user teammate@example.com --limit 100 --refresh-period monthly
```

Identify a member by their email address, username, or user ID.

Team owners can manage user budgets, and can also grant other members **AI Gateway Budget Manager** permissions from [team member settings](https://vercel.com/docs/rbac/managing-team-members). Spend using [Bring Your Own Key](https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/authentication-and-byok/byok) (BYOK) credentials doesn't count toward user budgets.

Update to the latest Vercel CLI with `vercel upgrade` to get started, and learn more in the AI Gateway [budgets documentation](https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/observability-and-spend/budgets).

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📚 **More updates:** [View all changelog entries](/changelog/sitemap.md) | [Blog](/blog/sitemap.md)