Claude apps gateway spend limits

Spend limits cap how much each developer can spend through your Claude apps gateway in a given day, week, or month. When a developer passes their cap, the gateway returns 429 on their next request and blocks them until the period resets or an admin raises the cap. Use spend limits to give each developer, group, or the whole organization a ceiling on a credential everyone shares. A Claude apps gateway forwards all inference through one shared upstream credential, so your provider’s bill attributes everything to that credential, not to individual developers. Without per-developer limits, one runaway agent fleet can spend the organization’s entire commitment. Spend limits are the gateway’s per-developer view and circuit breaker on top of that shared bill.

Set a cap

With the admin: block configured in gateway.yaml, the gateway serves an admin API at /v1/organizations/spend_limits and enforces caps live on every inference request. Caps themselves are set through that API, not in gateway.yaml; each POST /v1/organizations/spend_limits request creates or replaces one cap from {scope, amount, period}. The API mirrors the wire shapes of Anthropic’s public Admin API spend-limits endpoints, so an HTTP client written against that contract can target the gateway by changing its base URL. This request sets an org-wide default of $500 per month for every developer:

curl -sS https://claude-gateway.internal.example.com/v1/organizations/spend_limits \
  -H "x-api-key: $GATEWAY_ADMIN_WRITE_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"scope": {"type": "organization"}, "amount": "50000", "period": "monthly"}'

This request layers a tighter $100-per-day cap on each member of the contractors group:

curl -sS https://claude-gateway.internal.example.com/v1/organizations/spend_limits \
  -H "x-api-key: $GATEWAY_ADMIN_WRITE_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"scope": {"type": "rbac_group", "rbac_group_id": "contractors"}, "amount": "10000", "period": "daily"}'

Field	Values	Description
`scope.type`	`user`, `rbac_group`, `organization`	`user` targets one developer by their OpenID Connect (OIDC) `sub`, the stable user ID your identity provider assigns; pass it as `scope.user_id`. `rbac_group` targets an IdP group by name; pass it as `scope.rbac_group_id`. `organization` is the org-wide default. The gateway accepts all three; Anthropic’s public `POST` is user-only today.
`amount`	Whole-number string of USD cents, or `null`	`null` is unlimited. `"0"` is a zero cap, which blocks every request.
`period`	`daily`, `weekly`, `monthly`	A scope can hold one cap per period, and each enforces independently: a developer is blocked if over any of them.

A group or organization cap is a per-seat default that each member inherits, not a shared pool. Per period, a developer’s effective cap resolves in this order: a per-user override, then the most restrictive of their group caps, then the org default, then unlimited. admin.group_limit_mode: max flips the multi-group tie-break to least-restrictive instead.

Authenticate to the admin API

Send one of:

An x-api-key header matching a key in admin.write_keys for full access, or admin.read_keys for GET-only access. Each key carries an id that appears in the audit log as admin-key:<id>, so give Terraform, CI, and each automation its own.
A gateway bearer token whose groups claim includes one of admin.admin_groups. This is full access and audits as oidc:<sub>, so prefer it for human admins.

How enforcement works

On each /v1/messages request, the gateway looks up the developer’s caps and period-to-date spend in one Postgres query. A developer over any cap gets a 429 with error.type: billing_error and header x-should-retry: false. The message names the period and reset time, such as spend limit reached (daily; resets 2026-08-08 00:00 UTC), followed by your admin.blocked_message if set. When a developer exceeds several caps at once, the message names the cap that resets last. The response also carries a retry-after header with the seconds remaining until that reset. Before v2.1.225 on the gateway server, the message was spend limit reached with no period, reset time, or retry-after header. On v2.1.227 or later, the protocol reference at <public_url>/protocol also lists the exact usage-limit response headers and 429 body. Caps reset on UTC calendar boundaries: daily at 00:00 UTC, weekly on Monday, and monthly on the first. The gateway never blocks /v1/messages/count_tokens, because token counting is free.

How requests are priced

After each response, a usage meter reads the token counts and adds the cost to the daily, weekly, and monthly counters. It never touches the bytes sent to the client, so a metering failure can’t break a response. The amounts are USD estimates, a circuit breaker rather than an invoice; for billing, reconcile against your provider’s usage reporting. The meter picks each request’s rates in this order:

A matching pricing.overrides row for the upstream that served the request. Requires v2.1.227 or later.
List price for the upstream model ID, the string the gateway sends to the provider, when the Claude Code cost table recognizes it. The table accepts Anthropic, Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud’s Agent Platform, and Microsoft Foundry ID forms.
List price for the models[].id you mapped to that upstream ID, for upstream strings that carry no model name, such as an Amazon Bedrock application-inference-profile ARN or a Microsoft Foundry deployment name. Requires v2.1.218 or later.
The unknown-model tier of $5/$25 per million input/output tokens, so an ID the meter can’t place is never free. The gateway warns at boot and once per ID at runtime when it uses this tier.

Whichever rate applies, the meter then multiplies the amount by pricing.multiplier, default 1. Client aborts are billed too. When a stream ends without the upstream’s final usage frame, the meter bills a floor estimate of about four characters per output token for the text already sent to the client, so aborting requests early doesn’t evade a cap.

Postgres availability

The pre-check queries Postgres with a two-second timeout. If the store is unreachable or times out, enforcement fails open by default: the request proceeds, the gateway logs a warning, and the response carries no anthropic-ratelimit-unified-* headers. Set enforcement.fail_closed_on_error: true to fail closed instead, which returns the same 429 billing_error but with the message spend limit unavailable and no period, reset time, or retry-after header. Fail-open keeps a store outage from becoming an inference outage; fail-closed guarantees no unmetered spend.

Usage warnings in Claude Code

Claude Code warns a developer as they approach their cap: once utilization passes 75%, and again past 95% of their fullest cap. When the gateway blocks a request, Claude Code shows the gateway’s 429 message as is, including your admin.blocked_message. The warning works off response headers:

With v2.1.225 or later on the gateway server, each successful /v1/messages response for a developer who has a cap carries their own cap utilization and reset time in the anthropic-ratelimit-unified-* headers.
With v2.1.225 or later on the developer’s machine as well, Claude Code reads the headers and shows the warning.

The headers always describe the developer’s own cap: the gateway strips the upstream provider’s rate-limit headers, which describe your shared quota, and never forwards them.

Admin API reference

The endpoints below are served under /v1/organizations/spend_limits.

Method and path	Description
`GET /v1/organizations/spend_limits`	List configured caps, optionally filtered to one `scope_type` of `organization`, `rbac_group`, or `user`. Query: `?limit=&after_id=&before_id=&scope_type=`.
`POST /v1/organizations/spend_limits`	Create or replace a cap for `{scope, period}`.
`GET /v1/organizations/spend_limits/{id}`	Fetch one cap by its `spl_`-prefixed ID.
`DELETE /v1/organizations/spend_limits/{id}`	Delete one cap. Returns `{type: "spend_limit_deleted", id}`.
`GET /v1/organizations/spend_limits/effective`	Resolved cap and to-date spend per principal per period.
`GET /v1/organizations/spend_limits/audit`	Admin mutation trail, newest-first. Query: `?limit=&after_id=`.

Conventions mirror Anthropic’s Admin API:

A type on every object
spl_-prefixed IDs
Amounts as whole-number strings of USD cents; POST rejects any other currency with 400
The {type: "error", error: {type, message}, request_id} error envelope
A request-id response header on every admin response, success or error; error bodies also carry it as request_id

Every mutation writes a before/after row to admin_audit in the same transaction, attributed to admin-key:<id> or oidc:<sub>. The gateway serves the spend-limits endpoints only. Other Admin API surfaces, such as the spend_limit_increase_requests queue, aren’t part of the gateway’s admin API.

`/effective`

GET /v1/organizations/spend_limits/effective returns Anthropic’s SpendSummary schema: each row is a principal for a period, with the resolved cap, period-to-date spend, and an actor object. Gateway-specific differences:

user_id is the OIDC sub.
actor.name and actor.email_address are null until the principal’s first inference request through the gateway. The gateway has no user directory; it records last-seen values from each user’s own session JWT.
Each row also carries a groups array, the principal’s last-seen IdP groups. This is a gateway extension so an admin UI can show every cap tier that applies; Anthropic-shaped clients ignore it.
Without a user_ids[] filter, it lists principals with recorded spend, because the gateway can’t enumerate all org members.

Group-sourced caps resolve against those last-seen groups with the same group_limit_mode tie-break that enforcement uses, so the viewer shows the cap that actually applies.

Query parameter	Description
`user_ids[]`	Repeatable. Filter to specific principals by OIDC `sub`.
`period[]`	Repeatable. Filter to `daily`, `weekly`, or `monthly` rows.
`sort`	`spend_desc` lists top spenders first. Requires exactly one `period[]`.
`q`	Case-insensitive substring filter over the OIDC `sub`, last-seen email, and last-seen display name.
`limit` / `page`	Page size, 1–1000 with a default of 20, and the opaque cursor from the previous response’s `next_page`.

q= and user_ids[]= ride GET query strings, so any fronting proxy or load balancer captures them in its access logs. If your PII log policy is strict, scrub these parameters there.

`/audit`

Returns the spend-limit mutation trail: who changed which cap, with before/after snapshots, newest-first. has_more is exact. This endpoint follows the local Admin API conventions rather than a first-party wire shape.

Pagination

The raw list pages by after_id and before_id, which are mutually exclusive spl_… IDs; results are ordered by creation and has_more reflects the traversal direction. /effective pages by the opaque next_page token passed back as ?page=, with principals ordered ascending so pages stay stable while spend is being recorded. limit is 1–1000, default 20, on both. /audit pages by after_id, the numeric id of the last event on the previous page, and its limit defaults to 100.

Data lifecycle

The gateway holds four spend-related tables; an hourly sweep enforces the retention windows:

Table	Contents	Retention
`spend`	Per-principal period-to-date counters in cents	`admin.spend_retention_months`, default 13
`spend_limits`	The configured caps	Until deleted via the API
`admin_audit`	The mutation trail	`admin.audit_retention_days`, default 365
`principal_emails`	Each principal’s last-seen email, display name, and IdP groups. Contains PII.	`admin.identity_retention_days` since last activity, default 90

identity_retention_days is deliberately shorter than spend_retention_months: a deprovisioned identity stops refreshing and ages out, while its anonymous spend counters remain for year-over-year reporting. When a developer leaves, delete any per-user cap via DELETE /v1/organizations/spend_limits/{id}; their spend and identity rows age out on the retention windows above. To erase one person immediately, for offboarding or a data subject access request (DSAR), run DELETE FROM principal_emails WHERE principal = '<sub>' directly against the gateway database. That removes the only table holding their email, name, and groups. The spend and admin_audit rows reference the pseudonymous OIDC sub only and age out on their own windows.

admin and enforcement configuration: enabling the admin API and tuning retention
Deployment guide: Postgres schema and backup guidance

Setup and access

Deployment

Gateways

Usage and costs

Plugin distribution

Security and data

Adoption

Claude apps gateway spend limits

Set a cap

Authenticate to the admin API

How enforcement works

How requests are priced

Postgres availability

Usage warnings in Claude Code

Admin API reference

`/effective`

`/audit`

Data lifecycle

​Set a cap

​Authenticate to the admin API

​How enforcement works

​How requests are priced

​Postgres availability

​Usage warnings in Claude Code

​Admin API reference

​/effective

​/audit

​Pagination

​Data lifecycle

​Related

Set a cap

Authenticate to the admin API

How enforcement works

How requests are priced

Postgres availability

Usage warnings in Claude Code

Admin API reference

`/effective`

`/audit`

Pagination

Data lifecycle

Related