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Setting Tag Budgets

Track spend and set budgets for your API requests using tags. Tags allow you to categorize and monitor costs across different cost centers, projects, and departments.

Pre-Requisites​

  • You must set up a Postgres database (e.g. Supabase, Neon, etc.)

What are Tags?​

Tags are labels you can attach to your LLM requests to track and limit spending by category.

Common Use Cases:

  • Cost Center Tracking: Allocate LLM costs to specific departments or business units (e.g., "engineering", "marketing", "customer-support")
  • Project-based Budgeting: Set budgets for different projects or initiatives (e.g., "project-alpha", "chatbot-v2")
  • Customer Attribution: Track spend per customer or client (e.g., "customer-acme", "customer-techcorp")
  • Feature Monitoring: Monitor costs for specific features (e.g., "feature-chat", "feature-summarization")

Tags are added to each request in the metadata field to track and enforce budget limits.

Setting Tag Budgets​

1. Create a tag with budget​

Create a tag to represent a cost center, project, or any budget category. Set max_budget ($ value allowed) and budget_duration (how frequently the budget resets).

Example: Create a tag for your Engineering department with a monthly $500 budget

API​

Create a new tag and set max_budget and budget_duration

curl -X POST 'http://0.0.0.0:4000/tag/new' \
     -H 'Authorization: Bearer sk-1234' \
     -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{
            "name": "engineering", 
            "description": "Engineering department cost center",
            "max_budget": 500.0, 
            "budget_duration": "30d"
        }'

Request Body Parameters:

ParameterTypeRequiredDescription
namestringYesUnique name for the tag (e.g., cost center name)
descriptionstringNoDescription of what this tag tracks
modelslist[string]NoRestrict tag to specific models
max_budgetfloatNoMaximum budget in USD
budget_durationstringNoHow often budget resets (e.g., "30d", "1d")
soft_budgetfloatNoSoft budget limit for warnings

Response:

{
  "name": "engineering",
  "description": "Engineering department cost center",
  "max_budget": 500.0,
  "budget_duration": "30d",
  "budget_reset_at": "2025-11-10T00:00:00Z",
  "created_at": "2025-10-11T00:00:00Z"
}

LiteLLM Admin UI​

Navigate to the Tag Management page and click Create New Tag. Fill in the tag details and set your budget:


Possible values for budget_duration:

budget_durationWhen Budget will reset
budget_duration="1s"every 1 second
budget_duration="1m"every 1 minute
budget_duration="1h"every 1 hour
budget_duration="1d"every 1 day
budget_duration="7d"every 1 week
budget_duration="30d"every 1 month

2. Use the tag in your requests​

Add tags to your API requests in the metadata field:

Tags Budgets on API Keys

Currently, tag budget enforcement is only supported per request. If you'd like to set tags on API keys so all requests automatically inherit the tags budgets, please create a feature request on GitHub.

import openai

client = openai.OpenAI(
    api_key="sk-1234",  # Your LiteLLM proxy key
    base_url="http://0.0.0.0:4000"
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-4",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
    extra_body={
        "metadata": {
            "tags": ["engineering"]
        }
    }
)

3. Test It​

Make requests until the budget is exceeded:

curl -X POST 'http://0.0.0.0:4000/chat/completions' \
     -H 'Authorization: Bearer sk-1234' \
     -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{
           "model": "gpt-4",
           "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
           "metadata": {
               "tags": ["engineering"]
           }
         }'

When budget is exceeded, you'll see:

{
  "error": {
    "message": "Budget has been exceeded! Tag=engineering Current cost: 505.50, Max budget: 500.0",
    "type": "budget_exceeded",
    "param": null,
    "code": "400"
  }
}

Managing Tags​

View Tag Information​

Get information about specific tags:

curl -X POST 'http://0.0.0.0:4000/tag/info' \
     -H 'Authorization: Bearer sk-1234' \
     -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{
           "names": ["engineering", "marketing"]
         }'

Response:

{
  "engineering": {
    "name": "engineering",
    "description": "Engineering department cost center",
    "spend": 245.50,
    "max_budget": 500.0,
    "budget_duration": "30d",
    "budget_reset_at": "2025-11-10T00:00:00Z",
    "created_at": "2025-10-11T00:00:00Z",
    "updated_at": "2025-10-11T12:30:00Z"
  },
  "marketing": {
    "name": "marketing",
    "description": "Marketing department cost center",
    "spend": 89.20,
    "max_budget": 300.0,
    "budget_duration": "30d",
    "budget_reset_at": "2025-11-10T00:00:00Z",
    "created_at": "2025-10-11T00:00:00Z",
    "updated_at": "2025-10-11T12:30:00Z"
  }
}

Update Tag Budget​

Update an existing tag's budget:

curl -X POST 'http://0.0.0.0:4000/tag/update' \
     -H 'Authorization: Bearer sk-1234' \
     -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{
           "name": "engineering",
           "max_budget": 750.0,
           "budget_duration": "30d"
         }'

Delete Tag​

curl -X POST 'http://0.0.0.0:4000/tag/delete' \
     -H 'Authorization: Bearer sk-1234' \
     -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{
           "name": "engineering"
         }'

Multiple Tags per Request​

You can apply multiple tags to a single request to track costs across different dimensions simultaneously. For example, track both the cost center and the specific project:

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-4",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
    extra_body={
        "metadata": {
            "tags": ["engineering", "project-alpha", "customer-acme"]
        }
    }
)
curl -X POST 'http://0.0.0.0:4000/chat/completions' \
     -H 'Authorization: Bearer sk-1234' \
     -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{
           "model": "gpt-4",
           "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
           "metadata": {
               "tags": ["engineering", "project-alpha", "customer-acme"]
           }
         }'

Budget Enforcement: If any tag exceeds its budget, the request will be rejected.