Stop a session that spends too much with a budget

Give a session a budget in US dollars and it stops when its estimated spend reaches the budget. Once it has stopped, you can raise the budget and carry on.

How it works

What you do	What the agent does
Give the session a budget	Works as usual
—	When its estimated spend reaches the budget, stops once the current turn ends
Raise the budget and resume	Carries on from where it stopped

If one turn alone runs on to twice the budget, the session is stopped at once, mid-turn. The notification then reads “Halted mid-turn: far past its budget”. Both stops are the resumable stop, which keeps the conversation.

Set a budget

Where	How
When you start it	“More” → “Budget (USD)” in the start dialog
After it has started	“Spend budget…” in the session’s ⋯ menu, or press the spend shown in the chat
For every new session	“Budget for new sessions” in ⚙ Settings → “Agents”

“Budget for new sessions” applies to every session started without a budget of its own, including sessions started by create_session and by schedules
0 or empty means no budget
You can give it to the cent

See the spend

The chat’s context row shows the spend so far against the budget, as ”≈$1.84 / $5.00”.

It turns amber from 80% of the budget and red when the budget is reached
Press it to open the dialog that changes the budget
For a session that started child sessions with create_session, the children’s spend sits beside it, as “children ≈$0.42”. The children’s spend is only shown here and is not counted against this session’s budget: each child has its own

When it stops

A session stopped by its budget shows the “paused: budget” mark on its row, and the notification centre says “Stopped by its budget”.

Press “Raise budget & resume…” in the row’s ⋯ menu or on the notification
Check the spend so far and enter a new budget
Press “Raise & resume”

The "Raise budget & resume" dialog: it says the session stopped because its estimated spend reached its budget of $5.00, shows the spend so far as ≈$5.18, and has a field for the new budget

Only a budget above the spend so far is accepted
Resuming without raising the budget gives the session one more turn, after which it stops again

What the figure is

The spend is an estimate and not your bill.

It is an estimate at list price from the session’s own transcript, or the CLI’s own reported cost where it gives one (opencode)
On a subscription plan, it is what the same use would cost through the API
For Claude Code, it includes the session’s subagents and Workflow agents. The usage view’s totals include them too
A fork starts from $0: the history it copied is not charged to it

Some sessions are never stopped by a budget.

Case	Why
A model with no price	It cannot be estimated, so the budget has no effect (the dialog says so)
Kiro, Cursor, Antigravity	Their transcripts carry no token counts
The self-hosted engine	Its spend is $0