Budgets

Limit ChatAI cost and tokens per user with weekly or monthly budgets.

You can cap ChatAI usage per user with ai.consumption.budgets. Each budget sets a reset interval, optional cost and token limits, and optional provider/model allowlists. Cost limits use the same catalog described in Token prices.

To use consumption tracking, token prices, and budgets, ai.metrics must be enabled (ai.metrics: true). If metrics are disabled, budgets are not enforced and remaining-budget data is not shown.

If budgets is empty (the default), there are no budget restrictions.

For the field list, see ai.consumption in the Kiali CR spec.

Budget fields

Each item under ai.consumption.budgets is applied to one or more users:

Field Description
usernames Users this budget applies to. Required and must not be empty. Use * as a catch-all for everyone else.
interval When the budget resets: weekly or monthly.
max_cost Maximum estimated cost in the interval, in the catalog currency (typically USD).
max_tokens Maximum tokens in the interval, in millions of tokens (for example 10 means 10 million tokens).
allowed_providers Provider types this budget allows: openai, anthropic, google, lightspeed. Empty means all configured providers.
allowed_models Model names or IDs this budget allows. Supports * wildcards (for example claude-sonnet-*). Empty means all models of the allowed providers.

allowed_providers and allowed_models must refer to providers and models already defined in ai.chat.providers.

How a budget is chosen

On each chat request, Kiali picks one budget for the current user:

  1. An exact username match (the anonymous-shared user is treated as anonymous).
  2. Otherwise a * catch-all budget, if one exists.
  3. Otherwise no budget (the request is not limited).

An exact match always wins over *. Put specific users in their own entries, then optionally add a * entry for everyone else.

What is enforced

When metrics are enabled and a budget applies, Kiali:

  1. Rejects the request if the selected provider type is not in allowed_providers.
  2. Rejects the request if the selected model is not in allowed_models.
  3. Rejects the request if used cost in the current interval is at or above max_cost, or used tokens are at or above max_tokens million tokens.

The chatbot and consumption dashboard can show remaining cost and tokens for the current user.

Example

ai:
  enabled: true
  metrics: true                 # required for usage, cost, and budgets
  consumption:
    budgets:
      - usernames: ["alice", "bob"]
        interval: monthly
        max_cost: 50
        max_tokens: 10          # 10 million tokens
        allowed_providers: ["openai", "anthropic"]
        allowed_models: ["gpt-4o", "claude-sonnet-*"]
      - usernames: ["*"]
        interval: weekly
        max_cost: 5

In this example:

  • Alice and Bob share a monthly budget of 50 (USD, unless you changed the catalog currency) and 10 million tokens, and may only use the listed OpenAI and Anthropic models.
  • Every other user shares a weekly budget of 5 in cost, with no token cap and no provider/model restriction.

Operator (Kiali CR) uses the same keys under spec.ai. Helm (kiali-server) uses them under ai.consumption.budgets.

Last modified October 15, 2026: AI docs: Budget, consumption and prices (#1021) (38c88a7)