> ## 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.

# Cost Policies

> Set budgets, spending limits, and usage controls to manage AI costs across your organization

## What are Cost Policies?

Cost policies let you set spending limits and budget controls for AI usage across your organization. Define a monthly budget for all users, or different budgets per team via user groups, to prevent unexpected costs and ensure fair resource allocation.

**Dashboard:** [gateway.getunbound.ai/policies/cost-policies](https://gateway.getunbound.ai/policies/cost-policies)

## Cost Controls

### Monthly Budgets

Each cost policy sets a monthly spending limit in USD. The limit applies to each user the policy covers and tracks the calendar month, resetting when a new month starts.

* **Monthly Budget** — Maximum spend per user per calendar month
* **On budget exhaustion** — Enforcement happens in the Unbound hook that ships with each connected AI tool: once a user's budget is exhausted, further AI requests from that user are blocked at the source until the month rolls over or an admin raises the budget.
* **Priority** — When multiple cost policies cover the same user (for example an org-wide default plus a stricter team budget), the highest-priority policy applies.

### 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

### 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**

## Setting Up Cost Policies

1. Go to [Cost Policies](https://gateway.getunbound.ai/policies/cost-policies) in the Unbound dashboard
2. Set the monthly budget and choose which user groups the policy covers
3. Configure model routing rules to optimize costs (see [Model Policies](/policies/model-policies))

## 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](https://gateway.getunbound.ai/users/user-groups) during creation or editing.

## Enforcement Message

Each cost policy can carry a custom **Enforcement Message** — set in the create-policy modal under **Cost Configuration**. When the policy blocks a request, this string is surfaced to the user in place of the default "Budget exceeded" copy.

* Leave blank to use the default message.
* Use Markdown (links, bold) sparingly — most AI tools render the message as plain text.
* Keep it short. Long messages get truncated by the agent UI.

## Managing via CLI

List and manage cost policies from the terminal:

```bash theme={null}
unbound policy list --type COST
unbound policy get <policy-id>
```

<Card title="CLI Policy Management" icon="terminal" href="/cli/policies">
  Create and manage cost policies from the terminal
</Card>