Spend controls

Overview

SerpKite is prepaid, so the most you can ever spend is your balance. Spend controls give you finer limits on top of that. All of them live in the dashboard under Settings, and only the account owner can change them.

Control	What it does	Enforced by
Monthly spend cap	Hard limit on credits used per UTC month, across all keys	403 spend_cap_reached
Per-key limit	Hard limit on credits one key uses per UTC month	403 key_limit_reached
Low-balance alert	Email when the balance drops below a threshold	Email
Usage alert	Email when a percentage of the monthly cap is used	Email
Auto-recharge	Email a one-click checkout link when the balance drops below a threshold	Email

Monthly spend cap

The spend cap is the maximum number of credits the whole account may use in a UTC calendar month. It covers every key, every endpoint, the batch lane and MCP calls. It resets at 00:00 UTC on the first of the month.

A call that would exceed the cap is rejected before it runs and is not billed:

{
  "error": {
    "code": "spend_cap_reached",
    "message": "monthly spend cap reached; raise it at https://app.serpkite.com/settings",
    "request_id": "req_01J8ZKD2Q7XW4"
  }
}

Batch jobs reserve their cost against the cap when you submit them, so a queue of jobs can’t overshoot it later.

Raise the cap, remove it, or wait for the new month to resume. GET /v1/account returns monthly_spend_cap and this month’s month.credits, so you can check headroom from code before a large job.

Low-balance alert

Set a credit threshold and we email the account owner shortly after the balance drops below it. Alerts are checked in the background, and you get one email, not one per request; saving new alert settings re-arms it. Use it to buy the next pack before calls start failing with 402 insufficient_credits.

Usage alert

Set a percentage between 1 and 100, and we email you when the account has used that share of its monthly spend cap. For example, with a 50,000-credit cap and an 80% alert, you hear from us at 40,000 credits. It fires at most once per month, and only works when a spend cap is set.

Auto-recharge

Auto-recharge keeps production from running dry without storing a card that we charge in the background.

Nothing is charged until you complete the checkout, so auto-recharge can never buy credits you didn’t approve. If you need fully unattended top-ups, buy a larger pack ahead of time (credits never expire) or talk to us about Enterprise invoicing.

Webhook settings

Settings also holds the account’s default webhook URL for batch jobs and the webhook signing secret (whsec_…). The secret is shown once when you generate or rotate it; afterwards only its prefix is displayed. See Webhooks for delivery and signature verification.

Settings reference

The dashboard stores these fields (GET and PUT /v1/settings on the dashboard API, owner only):

Field	Type	Meaning
monthly_spend_cap	number or null	Credits per UTC month. null means no cap.
low_balance_alert	number or null	Email when the balance drops below this.
usage_alert_percent	integer or null	1–100. Email when this share of the cap is used.
auto_recharge.enabled	boolean	Turn auto-recharge emails on or off.
auto_recharge.threshold	number	Balance that triggers the email.
auto_recharge.pack_id	string	starter, growth, pro, business or scale.
webhook_url	string or null	Default webhook for batch jobs.

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