Just published this post about how we’re going to need default hard budget caps on pretty much everything https://simonwillison.net/2026/Oct/3/default-hard-budget-caps/
@simon LiteLLM allows you to set a daily or monthly cap.
@simon caps are after the fact, outside the loop. we all need inline governance services that assess and approve before work is sent to consume tokens, justifying spend per task, as part of approved budgets. Think procurement cards that say it's okay for Bob to rent a car for approved travel but not to buy a sports car (category, vendor, amount, cost center, signature threshold, etc.). Financial risk mgmt, IT security, procurement weigh in.
@simon netlify has this sort of- there's a dedicated "free-only" plan that will error before charging you anything (e.g. a surprise flood of visitors doesn't incur a surprise cost). Adds great peace of mind for experimenting!
@simon I don’t remember a world without “default hard budget caps” on just about everything (until recently).