---
title: "Spending caps & alerts"
description: "Starter's spending cap, the optional spending cap on Pro and Team, usage alert emails, and what happens when you reach each kind of limit."
---

dply has two kinds of spending control. A **spending cap** pauses usage once it reaches an amount in a billing period: Starter always has one, and Pro and Team can set one. A **usage alert** emails your organization's owners as usage grows, without stopping anything. This page covers both, and the hard limits that stop work regardless of spend.

## Spending cap

A spending cap is the most you'll pay for usage in a billing period, on top of the plan fee.

| Plan | Spending cap |
|---|---|
| Starter | Always on. $25 by default; you can raise or lower it. |
| Pro, Team | Off unless you set one. |

When usage reaches the cap:

- New builds fail with a message that the period's usage reached the spending cap.
- The organization is paused until the next billing period: sites serve a paused page, container apps stop taking traffic, queue workers stop, and databases and Valkey sleep. See [Paused accounts](/docs/paused-accounts).
- The cap is checked every few minutes, so a busy hour can go a little over.
- Raising the cap (or, on Pro and Team, removing it) resumes the organization right away.
- A $0 cap means never more than the plan fee: sites pause as soon as they use anything.

To change it, open your organization's **Billing** page, choose **Limits**, enter an amount under **Spending cap** and choose **Save**.

> [!NOTE]
> On Starter, leaving **Spending cap** empty puts it back to the $25 default. Only Pro and Team can run without a cap.

## Usage alerts

To avoid surprises, dply emails every owner of the organization when this billing period's usage charge passes 50%, 80% and 100% of your usage alert amount.

- Each threshold is emailed once per billing period.
- The amount compared is the usage charge: what will appear as usage lines on your next invoice. The plan fee and extra seats don't count.
- The default alert amount is twice your plan price: $58 on Pro and $98 on Team. On Starter it is the spending cap's default, $25.
- Reaching 100% doesn't pause or throttle anything. The email says so. Use a spending cap for that.

### Change the alert amount

1. Open your organization's **Billing** page.
2. Choose **Limits** and find **Usage alert**.
3. Enter an amount in dollars and choose **Save**. Leave it empty to go back to the default.

Only owners and members who can manage billing can change it.

> [!NOTE]
> Alerts are checked when billing syncs: once a day, and after each billing event from Stripe. An alert can arrive up to a day after usage crosses a threshold.

## Hard limits

Some limits stop work instead of billing more. These apply on every plan:

| Limit | What happens at the limit |
|---|---|
| Seats on Starter (1) and Pro (3, including pending invitations) | You can't invite another member. Move to a higher plan for more seats. |
| Concurrent builds (Starter 1, Pro 2, Team 5) | Extra builds wait in a queue until a slot frees up. |
| Build timeout (Starter 20 min, Pro 45 min, Team 60 min) | The build is stopped and the deploy fails. |
| Custom domains per organization (Starter 3, Pro 20, Team 100) | You can't add another domain. |
| Edge SQL databases and queues (Starter 2, Pro 10, Team 50) | You can't create another one. |
| Realtime connections per app (Starter 200, Pro 1,000, Team 5,000) | New connections are refused while the app is at its limit. |
| Fair-use limit on apps (Starter 25, Pro 250, Team 1,000) | Creating another app is refused with a message to contact support. |

See [Plans & pricing](/docs/pricing) for every limit.

## See what you're spending

Your organization's **Billing** page shows usage this period and the estimated charge for the current billing period. See [Usage & metering](/docs/usage).

## Related

- [Starter and spending caps](/docs/free-trial)
- [Usage & metering](/docs/usage)
- [Invoices & taxes](/docs/invoices)