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Introduction Functions Functions Invocation methods Function lookups Container lifecycle management Parametrized Functions Dynamic configuration Custom container images Defining Images Using existing container images Named images Fast pull from registry GPUs and other resources GPU acceleration Using CUDA on Modal Configuring CPU, memory, and disk Scaling out Scaling out Input concurrency Batch processing Job queues Dynamic batching Multi-node clusters BetaDeployment Apps, Functions, and entrypoints Managing deployments Continuous deployment Scheduled Functions Endpoints Endpoints Endpoint metrics Benchmark an endpoint Endpoint integrations Sandboxes Sandboxes Running commands Networking and security File access Snapshots Pricing and resources VM Sandboxes BetaNotebooks Secrets and environment variables Secrets Environment variables HTTP Applications Servers Web Functions Streaming endpoints Web Function URLs Request timeouts Proxy Tokens Networking Tunnels Proxies BetaCluster networking Data sharing and storage Passing local data Volumes Storing model weights Cloud bucket mounts Dicts Queues Dataset ingestion Performance Cold start performance Memory Snapshots High-performance LLM inference Reliability and robustness Failures and retries Preemption Timeouts GPU health Troubleshooting Security and privacy Security and privacy Customer-supplied encryption keys AlphaAudit logs Integrations Using OIDC to authenticate with external services Connecting Modal to your Datadog account Connecting Modal to your OpenTelemetry provider Okta SSO Custom SAML SSO SCIM Integration BetaSlack notifications BetaWorkspace & account settings Workspaces Environments Modal user account setup Service users Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) Billing Budgets Other topics Feature maturity Restricted Functions JavaScript/Go SDKs BetaModal 1.0 migration guide File and project structure Developing and debugging Jupyter notebooks Asynchronous API usage Global variables Region selection S3 Gateway endpoints GPU Metrics

Budgets

Modal budgets let you cap usage at both the Workspace and Environment level:

  • Workspace budget: a monthly cap for total Workspace usage across the Workspace.
  • Environment budget: a monthly cap for compute usage in a specific Environment.

Only Workspace Owners and Managers can set, edit, or remove budgets. See Workspace roles for role details.

When to use each budget 

  • Use a Workspace budget when you want one overall monthly cap for the Workspace.
  • Add Environment budgets when multiple teams or workloads share a Workspace and need independent usage guardrails.
  • Keep both enabled when you want per-Environment isolation without losing a Workspace-wide hard cap.

How limits apply 

Workspace and Environment budgets are enforced together:

  • The Workspace budget is the hard outer cap for the entire Workspace.
  • If an Environment has no explicit budget, it inherits the Workspace effective limit.
  • You cannot set an Environment budget to a value that exceeds the Workspace effective cap.
  • Environment budgets do not need to sum to the Workspace budget.

Example: if your Workspace budget is $50, setting Environment budgets of $30 and $40 does not raise the Workspace cap. The Workspace can still hit $50 first, without hitting either Environment budget.

Workspace budgets 

Workspace budgets (also shown as your usage limit in the dashboard) cap total usage for the Workspace during the current billing cycle — before credits are applied.

You can set, edit, or remove a Workspace budget on the Usage & Billing page.

The maximum budget you can set depends on prior successful charges for the Workspace. If incremental usage charges succeed, that maximum can increase.

Spend limits 

Starting September 1st, 2026, Modal also supports a Workspace spend limit: a monthly cap on net charges (what you pay out of pocket after credits are applied). This is separate from your Workspace budget, which caps usage.

When the spend limit is reached, Modal stops workloads that would incur additional out-of-pocket charges. Workloads that can still be covered by remaining applicable credits may continue until the usage limit is reached.

If you do not set a custom spend limit, Modal uses the cycle’s usage limit minus credits. For example, if your usage limit is $100 and you have $30 in credits, the default spend limit is $70.

Workspace Owners and Managers can set, edit, or reset the spend limit on the Usage & Billing page. Use Reset to default to clear a custom value and return to the cycle’s usage limit minus credits.

Environment budgets 

Environment budgets cap compute usage for a single Environment within the same billing cycle. Note that this means it does not include all Workspace-level charges (for example, storage and reservations), so Environment budget usage is not a full invoice total by itself.

You can set, edit, or remove Environment budgets on the Workspace Management → Environments page.