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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.getunbound.ai/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

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What are Cost Policies?

Cost policies let you set spending limits and budget controls for AI usage across your organization. Define monthly budgets per application, per user, or per team to prevent unexpected costs and ensure fair resource allocation. Dashboard: gateway.getunbound.ai/policies/cost-policies

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Cost Controls

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Application Budgets

Set a monthly spending limit for each application. When the budget is reached, the gateway returns a 402 error and blocks further requests.
  • Monthly Budget — Maximum spend per calendar month
  • On budget exhaustion — Requests are blocked with a 402. To route to a cheaper model instead of hard-blocking, add an Error Code Routing rule for 402 in Security Policies pointing at a fallback model. The two policies compose: Cost Policy enforces the limit, Error Code Routing handles the fallback.

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Model Cost Optimization

Use model policies to route requests to cost-effective models by default, while keeping expensive models available for complex tasks:
  • Route simple completions to smaller, cheaper models
  • Reserve premium models for tasks that require higher capability
  • Use sensitivity-based routing to only send sensitive data to private (often more expensive) models

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Usage Monitoring

Track costs in real-time from the Unbound dashboard:
  • Per-user breakdown — See which team members consume the most resources
  • Per-model costs — Understand spending across different LLM providers
  • Trend analysis — Identify usage patterns and optimize accordingly
  • Export — Admins can download a full usage report with daily granularity from Billing → Usage → Export

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Setting Up Cost Policies

  1. Go to Cost Policies in the Unbound dashboard
  2. Set budget limits and cost controls
  3. Configure model routing rules to optimize costs (see Model Policies)

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Applying to Users

By default, a cost policy with no user groups applies to everyone in your organization. To restrict a policy to specific teams, assign it to one or more user groups during creation or editing. Policies can also be scoped to specific AI tools — for example, setting a tighter monthly budget for Claude Code than for Cursor. Select one or more applications during policy creation.

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Managing via CLI

List and manage cost policies from the terminal: 
unbound policy list --type COST
unbound policy get <policy-id>

CLI Policy Management

Create and manage cost policies from the terminal