Manage budgets and cost controls for Genie

note

Starting July 6, 2026, Databricks begins charging for Genie product usage beyond a free monthly allowance. For details, see what's coming. Account admins can begin setting budgets and cost controls now.

Genie products are billed using a pay-as-you-go model. To monitor and control this spending, account admins can set budgets that track Genie spend through Unity AI Gateway. Budgets let you track and control Genie spend for your entire account, for specific workspaces, for user groups, or for individual users, and alert you before limits are reached.

For the full budget creation procedure, see Create and monitor budgets. For budgets that track other Unity AI Gateway endpoint usage, see Manage budgets for Unity AI Gateway.

How Genie billing works

Genie products, including Genie Spaces, Genie Code, and Genie, share a single pay-as-you-go pricing model:

• Free monthly usage: Each user receives a free amount of LLM usage every month. The free usage applies to identified users, not Databricks service principals.
• Pay-as-you-go usage: Usage beyond the free amount is billed in DBUs based on the underlying LLM usage.

Budgets apply to pay-as-you-go usage. You cannot use a budget to remove a user's free monthly usage.

For current pricing and the free usage amount, see the Databricks pricing page.

Requirements

• You must be an account admin to create and manage budgets.
• The Unity AI Gateway Budget Public Preview enabled in the account console. See Manage Databricks previews.

Create a budget for Genie

Budgets are created and managed in the account console. See Create and monitor budgets for more information.

To create a budget for Genie usage, use the Unity AI Gateway resource type and the databricks-product: genie resource tag. Don't add other resource tags to a Genie budget. Additional tags aren't supported and prevent the budget from tracking Genie usage.

Follow these steps to create a Genie budget with a shared threshold for a workspace, plus per-user thresholds and overrides:

1. In the account console sidebar, click Usage.

2. Click the Budgets tab. This tab shows existing budgets for the account.

3. Click Create budget.

4. In the Scope section, set the scope for the budget:

   1. Enter a Name for your budget.
   2. In the Workspaces drop-down, select the workspaces you would like to include in your budget. Leave the field empty to track your entire account's usage.
   3. In the Resource types drop-down, select Unity AI Gateway.
   4. In the Resource tags section:
      1. Click Select tags.
      2. In the Key drop-down, enter databricks-product.
      3. In the Values drop-down, enter genie.

5. Configure Shared thresholds to set a usage pool that applies to all users and workspaces in the budget scope.

   1. Click Add threshold.
   2. Set an amount for the Monthly threshold. This is the monthly threshold shared among all users and workspaces defined in the budget scope.
   3. Under When threshold exhausted, check Send alert and/or Block usage. Checking Block usage blocks Genie usage for all users when the budget threshold is met. Databricks recommends checking only Send alert, then using per-user thresholds and overrides to block usage.
   4. If you checked Send alert, enter Email addresses to receive budget alerts when usage reaches the threshold.
   5. Click Add.

6. Configure Per-user thresholds to set the monthly threshold that applies to each user in the budget's scope.

   1. Click Add threshold.
   2. Enter a dollar amount in the Monthly threshold field. This threshold applies to every user in the budget's scope, on top of their free monthly usage. For example, enter $100 to give every user a $100 monthly limit.
   3. Under When threshold exhausted, check Send alert and/or Block usage. Checking Block usage blocks Genie usage for the user when the budget threshold is met. You can set per-user overrides to grant certain users or groups a higher threshold.
   4. Enter a comma-separated list of email addresses in the Email addresses field. These addresses receive alerts when a user's spending exceeds the threshold. The notification identifies the user, their month-to-date spend, and the budget.
   important

   Budget email notifications include the budget name, user identity for per-user thresholds, and defined custom tags. Email recipients do not need to be Databricks users. Ensure you are protecting sensitive data when naming the budget, selecting tags, and adding email recipients.

7. Add per-user overrides to give some users or groups a higher threshold:

   1. Click Add override.
   2. In the Users dropdown, select a specific user or a user group.
   3. Enter a dollar amount in the Monthly threshold field. This threshold overrides the per-user threshold for selected users. For example, give the genie-code group a $200 threshold so those users get a higher limit. If a user is in more than one user group, they inherit the most permissive threshold within the budget.
   4. Click Add.

8. Set Permissions for workspace admins. Grant Can manage to allow workspace admins to manage this budget, or set permissions to None to allow only account admins to manage the budget.

9. Click Create.

The image above shows an example budget configuration for Genie usage in the dais-development workspace, with a shared threshold of $5,000 and a per-user threshold of $100. Per-user overrides give users in the genie-code group a higher threshold of $200 and users in the power-users group $300 per month. If a user is in both genie-code and power-users, they inherit the more permissive threshold of $300.

Limitations

• Budgets cannot remove a user's free monthly usage.
• Databricks service principals do not receive free monthly usage and are billed for all of their usage.
• Budgets track LLM usage. Compute used to run queries, such as a SQL warehouse, is billed separately and is not included in Genie budgets.
• There can be a delay of up to 24 hours between usage occurring and an alert being sent.

Related resources

• Create and monitor budgets
• Manage budgets for Unity AI Gateway
• Monitor Unity AI Gateway cost
• Audit logs for AI/BI

FAQs

How do I give each user $30 a month?

Create a budget scoped to Genie and set a per-user threshold of $30. The threshold applies to every user in the budget's scope, limiting each user's pay-as-you-go spend to $30 a month. Each user also keeps their free monthly usage, which the budget can't remove. To grant specific users or groups a higher limit, add a per-user or per-group override. See Create and monitor budgets.

What happens when a Genie budget is exhausted?

When a user reaches a budget limit, what happens depends on the action the admin set for the budget:

• Alert: An alert is sent to all the email addresses configured for the threshold that was met, and the user can keep using Genie products.
• Block usage: The user can't use Genie products until the budget resets or an admin raises their limit. The user sees a message that their budget is exhausted.

Users always keep their free monthly usage, which a budget can't remove. To give a blocked user more paid usage, an admin can raise their limit with a per-user or per-group override.

What happens if I don't block usage in my budget?

If you don't check Block usage for a threshold, Databricks only sends alerts when the threshold is met. Users can continue using Genie products until another threshold that blocks usage, such as a per-user override, is met.

Can I set different budgets for Genie, Genie Spaces, and Genie Code?

Budgets are shared across Genie, Genie Spaces, and Genie Code, using a single databricks-product: genie resource tag. For example, a user who spends $2 in Genie and $10 in Genie Code has $12 counted toward their monthly budget.

To isolate budgets by product, create a user group for each product (for example, geniecodeusers and genieusers) and set a per-user threshold for each group. When a user belongs to multiple groups, the most permissive limit applies.

Which budget applies when more than one budget is scoped to Genie?

A user's effective limit is the most permissive threshold within a budget, but the most restrictive limit across budgets:

• Within one budget: If only one budget is scoped to Genie and a user belongs to one user group with a $100 threshold and another user group with a $200 threshold, the most permissive limit applies, so the user gets $200.
• Across budgets: If an admin creates more than one budget scoped to Genie, the most restrictive limit applies. For example, if a user's most permissive threshold is $100 in one budget and $200 in another, the user is blocked at $100.

How do I monitor Genie spend?

Spend and usage data become available after pay-as-you-go billing begins on July 6, 2026.

To review spending, use the following:

• Budget details page: View month-to-date spend, remaining budget, and per-user spend for budgets scoped to Unity AI Gateway. See View budget details.
• Billable usage system table: Query system.billing.usage for account-wide cost analysis. See Billable usage system table reference.