Budget alerts notify you by email when your account-wide usage-based spend crosses a dollar threshold you define. Use budget alerts to manage costs proactively instead of discovering unexpected charges at the end of a billing cycle.
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Log in to the Cloudflare dashboard ↗ and select your account.
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Go to Manage Account > Billing.
Go to Billing ↗ -
Select Billable Usage.
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Select Create budget alert.
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Configure the alert:
Field Description Alert name A descriptive name for the alert (for example, "R2 spend warning"). Description (Optional) A note about when this alert should fire. Budget threshold (USD) The dollar amount that triggers the alert. When your cumulative usage-based spend for the current billing period crosses this value, Cloudflare sends a notification. Email recipients One or more email addresses to notify. Select Add email to add additional recipients. -
Select Save.
To view your existing budget alerts, go to Manage Account > Billing > Billable Usage and select Budget alerts. The count next to the button shows how many alerts you have configured.
From there you can edit or delete existing alerts.
- Budget alerts evaluate your cumulative usage-based spend for the current billing period.
- When spend crosses the threshold, Cloudflare sends a single email notification to all configured recipients.
- The alert resets at the start of each new billing period.
- Budget alerts are informational only. They do not pause or cap usage. Your monthly invoice remains the authoritative source for billing.
Cloudflare offers two types of spend monitoring:
| Feature | Budget alerts | Usage notifications |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Account-wide, all usage-based products combined | Per-product (for example, Argo bytes or Workers requests) |
| Threshold | Dollar amount | Product-specific metric (bytes, requests, minutes) |
| Setup location | Billing > Billable Usage | Notifications |
| Best for | Overall cost management | Monitoring a single product |
For per-product usage notifications, refer to Usage-based billing.
- Monitor billable usage — Track daily usage-based costs
- Usage-based billing — Which products use metered billing
- How Cloudflare billing works — Billing lifecycle and charge types