# Cost control

> Cap monthly spend with a budget that notifies or pauses, let idle apps sleep, right-size limits, and pick reserved boxes only for steady load.

Ownkube meters per minute for what you actually run, so keeping the bill down is mostly about running lean: let idle apps sleep, set honest limits, and put a cap on the month so nothing runs away.

## Spend limits

A **monthly budget** caps month-to-date spend across all regions. When spend reaches it, Ownkube either emails the owner and keeps running, or pauses every workload and keeps the data. Either way, **spending alerts** email the owner at 50%, 80% and 100% of the budget.

1. Open the [Billing page](https://app.ownkube.io/dashboard/billing) and find the **Spend limits** card.

2. Enter a **Monthly budget** in US dollars.

3. Under **At the budget**, pick **Notify me** (email the owner, keep running) or **Pause everything** (pause all workloads, keep data).

4. Leave **Spending alerts** on and save.

From the terminal:

```bash
okctl billing spend-controls get
okctl billing spend-controls set --budget 40 --budget-action pause --alert-thresholds 50,80,100
```

Only the flags you pass change. A budget pause scales every app, database and cache to zero and deletes nothing; raise the budget or wait for the new month and everything resumes. That makes a pause budget the safest default for a side project: it is the one setting that guarantees a bounded bill.

A budget pause is not the same as running the wallet dry. Hitting zero balance suspends the account, and an account left suspended for exhaustion for 7 days has its Compute resources deleted. Set the budget below your usual top-up so the pause fires first. See [How the wallet works](/docs/billing/plans#how-the-wallet-works).

## Where the savings come from

### Let idle apps sleep

CPU bills only while it runs and memory only on what a running app holds. Turn on [sleep when idle](/docs/deployments/sleep) and a quiet web app stops metering entirely until the next request wakes it. Databases and caches can sleep too.

### Scale on load, not guesses

[Autoscaling](/docs/deployments/autoscaling) adds replicas under load and removes them when traffic drops, so you only pay for capacity you use.

### Right-size the limits

Set honest CPU and memory limits per workload. They are ceilings, not a price, so the bill follows the meter. The [Metrics tab](/docs/observability/metrics) shows how close you run to them.

### Reserve only steady load

A workload that runs flat-out all month can opt into a [reserved box](/docs/billing/plans#reserved-boxes) for a predictable price. A bursty one is cheaper on the meter.

### Watch the burn

The [Usage page](/docs/billing/usage) shows the live hourly rate and a straight-line projection, so a surprise shows up in hours, not at month end.

### Keep traffic in the region

Inbound and in-region traffic are free; outbound bills per GB. Put an app and its datastores in the same region and talk over the [private network](/docs/networking/private).

## A worked example

A small app (one web service at 0.5 vCPU / 512 MiB and one worker at 0.25 vCPU / 256 MiB) that stays mostly idle, plus a small managed Postgres (a DB 1 box with 10 GB of storage), in the Germany region:

| Component | How it meters | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Web service | Metered, mostly idle | ~\$3 to 5 |
| Worker | Metered, mostly idle | ~\$2 to 3 |
| Postgres (DB 1, 10 GB) | Reserved box plus storage | ~\$10.50 |
| Bandwidth (~10 GB out) | Per GB at \$0.02 | ~\$0.20 |
| **Total** | | **~\$16 to 19** |

The database, billed as a box, is the bulk of the bill; the app itself is a few dollars while it sits idle. Right-size the database and you move the whole number. The same bandwidth in the Mumbai region is about \$1.30.

## Running in your own cloud

In your own AWS account your AWS bill is the source of truth for compute cost, and any Reserved Instances or Savings Plans you hold apply directly. Ownkube charges nothing on a Starter cluster and a per-vCPU fee on Production (EKS). See [Clusters](/docs/own-cloud/clusters).

- [Plans and pricing](/docs/billing/plans)
- [Usage](/docs/billing/usage)
- [Sleep when idle](/docs/deployments/sleep)

---

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