We're going to need default hard budget caps on pretty much everything
Here's a product feature which the world is going to need a whole lot more of over the coming months and years: default hard budget caps . I'm talking about the feature of pay-by-usage services and APIs that lets you say "after $X/month, cut this thing off and return errors". These need to be hard limits. Soft caps, "after $X/month, send me a warning email", will not cut it. Coding agents, and…
Simon Willison argues that default hard budget caps are essential for pay-by-usage services and APIs. These caps should be "hard limits" that cut off functionality and return errors after a certain threshold, rather than soft caps that only send warnings. Coding agents and personal agents can help reduce the risk of exceeding budget limits by recommending providers with hard caps and warning users about potential issues.
The author hopes that AWS will soon launch spending limits for existing accounts, as they launched recently. Google Cloud already offers a similar feature called Spend Caps. The author believes this trend indicates that hard budget caps will become standard in the industry.
Written by urgent.news from Simon Willison's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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- We're going to need default hard budget caps on pretty much everything simonwillison.net
