Guide
Set an AI budget that actually alerts
A budget number by itself does nothing — the value is in getting told before you blow past it, not after the invoice arrives. Meterlark's project budgets watch month-to-date spend as usage entries come in and fire an alert at a threshold you choose, plus a second one if you go over entirely.
Open the project's settings
Go to the project you want to budget and open Settings. Budgets and alerts are a Pro feature — the free plan tracks spend but doesn't watch it against a limit.
Set the monthly budget
Enter a monthly budget in dollars. This resets each calendar month and is compared against the sum of that month's usage entries, computed or reported, for this project.
Choose an alert threshold
Set the percentage of the budget that should trigger an early warning — commonly somewhere in the 70-90% range. Pick a number that gives you enough runway to actually act, not one that's technically correct but arrives too late to matter.
Let usage entries do the rest
Every time a usage entry is added — manually or via CSV import — Meterlark recalculates month-to-date spend for the project and checks it against both the threshold and the full budget. Crossing the threshold fires a budget_threshold alert; going over 100% fires a separate budget_exceeded alert.
Check and acknowledge alerts
Triggered alerts show up on the alerts page. Each alert kind fires once per project per month, so you won't get repeat notifications for the same crossing — acknowledge it once you've seen it.
If a threshold turns out to be too noisy or too late, adjust it — the right number is whatever matches how often you actually check the dashboard, not a fixed rule.
More guides
Guide
Import Anthropic usage CSV
How to export usage from the Anthropic Console and import it into Meterlark as tracked spend, without hand-entering every row.
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Import OpenAI usage CSV
How to export usage from the OpenAI platform and import it into Meterlark as tracked spend, without hand-entering every row.