AI Gateway Budget Alerts
- Applies to
- Gatewayruntime for API, AI, and MCP gateways
- Hosting
- Managed EdgeManaged DedicatedSelf-Hosted
Budget alerts tell you when usage crosses an amount set in a budget rule, so you don't have to watch the analytics to find out. There's nothing to set up. Each Warn or Block row in a budget rule sets an amount; crossing that amount sends an alert to the people who can see the pool or app.
What you're notified about
A budget rule caps cost, tokens, or requests over a UTC period and can have a Warn row, a Block row, or both for the same meter and period. See Usage Limits for how to write one.
Each budget is reported once per row per period: the first time its usage crosses the amount, and again after the period resets. A By metadata rule gives every value its own budget, so each value is reported separately. Usage is checked about once a minute, and an alert usually arrives within a minute or two of the crossing. Alerts for several values of one rule are held for up to five minutes so they arrive together.
| Alert | When it's sent | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Warning | Usage first crosses the Warn amount | Requests continue. Use the time left in the period to raise the limit or slow the caller down. |
| Limit reached | Usage first crosses the Block amount | Requests are rejected with 429 Too Many Requests, or served by the app's quota fallback, until the period resets. The alert includes the reset time. See When a limit is exceeded. |
If one request pushes usage past both amounts, you get only a Limit reached alert.
What the alert names depends on the rule's scope:
- A Shared rule names the gateway, pool, or app whose budget it is.
- A By metadata rule names the metadata value that crossed, such as one
x-uservalue. When several values of the same rule cross an amount within five minutes, they arrive as one alert listing the values. - The User App's per-person budget names the person.
Who is notified
Alerts go to the people who can already see the usage in the Zuplo Portal:
- A pool or an app: everyone with view access to it. A pool member receives alerts for that pool and the apps in it; someone with access to the whole project receives alerts for every pool.
- The User App: only the Admins who can edit it, the people who set its budget. Everyone else on the project can see only their own usage, so they aren't told about the app's total or about other people.
- A personal budget: the person it belongs to, and the User App's Admins.
Where alerts arrive
Each alert is delivered two ways, and both are on by default:
- In-app feed: the notification bell in the Zuplo Portal header. The feed links to the app, pool, or gateway page that shows the usage.
- Email: a message to the address on your Zuplo profile.
Turn alerts off
Turning alerts off changes only what you receive. Everyone else keeps their own settings.
Turn off all budget alerts
To stop receiving budget alerts for every gateway, open your Profile in the Zuplo Portal and find the Notifications section. On the AI Gateway Budget Alerts row, clear In-app Feed, Email, or both.
Mute a gateway, pool, or app
To keep alerts for most of a gateway and silence the parts you don't need, mute them from the analytics:
-
Open your AI Gateway project in the Zuplo Portal and go to Observability → Analytics, then select Pools & Apps.
-
Select the alert bell on a pool card or an app row. It's the mute control for that pool or app.
-
Switch off Warnings, Limit reached, or both.
Muting a pool mutes every pool and app inside it, including ones created later. Under a muted pool, each pool and app shows locked switches and names the muted pool. To receive alerts for any of them again, turn that pool's alerts back on.
The gateway card at the top of the Pools & Apps page covers the whole gateway. Muting it mutes every pool, every app, the User App, and every person's personal budget, your own included.
Alerts don't change enforcement
Muting an alert, or turning the category off on your profile, changes who is told, not what happens. A Block row still rejects requests at its amount, or sends them to the app's quota fallback, and a Warn row still lets them through.
Related resources
- Usage Limits - Set the amounts that trigger these alerts.
- User Apps - Set the per-person budget behind personal budget alerts.
- Fallback Models - Serve a cheaper model instead of a
429when a Block amount is reached.