Agent LaneTool
AI agent spend cap calculator
Turn your agents’ expected usage into starting-point limits: per-payment, daily and monthly caps, a payment rate limit and an approval threshold. Runs in your browser; nothing is sent anywhere.
Starting-point caps
- Per-payment cap
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- Human approval above
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- Rate limit per agent
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- Daily cap per agent
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- Monthly cap per agent
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- Total monthly budget, all agents
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Preview the JSON and its fields
max_per_payment: reject any single charge above this.require_approval_above: charges above this wait for a human OK.max_payments_per_hour: pause the agent when it pays faster than this.max_per_day,max_per_month: per-agent totals that stop spending when reached.total_monthly_budget: all agents combined.
Not a standard format: map each field to your card, wallet or payment tool settings, or check it in code before each payment.
How to enforce these caps
- AI agent spending limits: stack session, daily and monthly caps outside the model.
- Virtual cards for AI agents: put the per-payment and daily caps on a card.
- Giving an AI agent a credit card: what to check before an agent holds card details.
- Dedicated agent wallet: fund only what one bad run can lose.
- AI API cost calculator: work out cost per run from tokens and your price per million.
- What an AI agent costs: sanity-check the cost per run you entered.
Prefer it on paper? The AI Spend-Cap Setup Guide ($15) walks through caps, virtual cards and a separate small wallet.
FAQ
- What is an AI agent spend cap?
- A hard dollar limit enforced outside the model, by a card, wallet, payment tool or code, that stops an agent from spending once it is reached. Most setups stack several: per payment, per day and per month.
- How do I choose the per-payment cap?
- Start just above the biggest payment the agent should ever make: 1.5 times your largest expected payment, or 3 times the average if you don’t know the largest. Tighten it after a few weeks of real receipts.
- What approval threshold should I set?
- Low enough that anything unusual reaches a person. Twice your average payment lets routine charges through and holds the rest. If an agent should never buy anything, use $0 so every purchase needs a yes.
- Why limit payments per hour?
- Caps limit how much; a rate limit limits how fast. A looping or tricked agent can make many small payments that each pass the per-payment cap. A limit of about twice the normal pace stops that within the hour, long before the daily cap.
- Can I just tell the agent its limit in the prompt?
- No. A prompt is a request the model can ignore or a malicious web page can override. Put the numbers where the money moves: card limits, wallet balance, payment tool settings, or code that checks each payment.
Embed this calculator
Add it to your own site with one iframe. It loads a single small page with no tracking scripts.