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title: Budget Management
description: How to configure the 3-level independent budget system
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Alephant features a **Three-Level Independent Budget System**. This ensures that costs are controlled at every granularity without complex cascading rules. Each level evaluates usage independently and triggers actions when limits are reached.

## 1. Workspace Budget

* **Scope:** The total spend across your entire organization.
* **Action:** Can trigger alerts (e.g., "Notify me when total spend hits 80% of \$5,000").

## 2. Department Budget (Enterprise Only)

* **Scope:** Total spend generated by all Members and Agents within a specific Department.
* **Actions:** Can be set to `pause_all` (block requests), `alert_only`, or `soft_throttle` (reduce throughput) when the department limit is reached.

## 3. Virtual Key (VK) Budget

* **Scope:** Spend generated by a single Virtual Key (tied to an individual Member or Agent).
* **Actions:** Configurable to `alert_only`, `disable_key`, or `block_requests`.

### Key Principle

The three levels do **not** cascade. A single Virtual Key might exhaust its micro-budget and be blocked, even while the Department and Workspace overall budgets are perfectly healthy.