---
title: Spend Alerts
description: Set up spend alerts to receive email notifications when your monthly spending crosses percentage thresholds of a budget you define.
product: Platform
url: https://docs.digitalocean.com/platform/billing/spend-alerts/
last_updated: "2026-08-05"
---

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# Spend Alerts

Spend alerts send email notifications when spending on your team or organization crosses a percentage threshold of a monthly budget you define. You can create multiple alerts with different scopes: total spend, specific products, or, for organizations, specific teams.

Spend alerts are available for both teams and [organizations](https://docs.digitalocean.com/platform/organizations/index.html.md):

- For teams, go to [the **Spend alerts** tab](https://cloud.digitalocean.com/account/billing/spend-alerts) on the **Billing** page.
- For organizations, click the profile icon in the top right of the Control Panel, click **View Organizations**, select your organization, click the **Billing** tab, then click **Spend alerts**.

## Create a Spend Alert

To create a spend alert, click **Create alert** to open the **Create New Spend Alert** window, then fill out the following fields:

- **Alert name**: A name for the alert.
- **Monthly budget amount**: The monthly spend amount that percentage thresholds are measured against.
- **Alert thresholds**: One or more percentages of your budget. We send a notification when your usage crosses each threshold. To use a percentage not in the list, click **Add custom threshold**.
- **What do you want to track?**: Choose **Total spend** to track all usage in the alert’s scope, or **Specific products** to narrow the alert to products you choose.

For organizations, an alert’s scope can cover the entire organization or a single team in the organization.

The **Notification recipients** section lists who receives the alert emails: team owners and billers for team alerts, and organization owners and billers for organization alerts.

Click **Create alert** to save the alert.

**Note**:

  A spend alert budget is not a spending cap and does not limit how much you can use. Separately from any alerts you set, we attempt to charge your payment method when your usage reaches your tier’s [auto-charge amount](https://docs.digitalocean.com/platform/billing/pay-bills/index.html.md#payment-methods-and-due-dates). If a charge fails, your access to provisioning resources is restricted until payment is resolved. You can view the current amount due on the [**Billing**](https://cloud.digitalocean.com/account/billing) page.

## Edit a Spend Alert

To edit an existing alert, on the **Spend alerts** page, click the **…** menu next to the alert, then click **Edit alert** to open the **Edit Spend Alert** page. Update the alert’s name, budget, thresholds, or tracking options, then click **Save changes**.

## How Spend Alert Notifications Work

We send notifications based on your actual usage and notify recipients within an hour of your spend crossing a threshold. Each threshold notifies once per billing cycle. If you change an alert’s budget or thresholds during a billing cycle, its threshold tracking resets, and notifications can fire again as spend crosses the updated thresholds.

Because alerts are based on actual usage, projections of Droplet transfer in excess of the transfer pool do not trigger an alert until they are applied to the invoice.

## Migrated Billing Alerts

Before spend alerts, you could set a single billing alert that emailed you when your monthly spending exceeded a set amount. If you had a billing alert, we migrated it to the **Spend alerts** page as an alert named **Account Spend Alert** with a single threshold at 100% of your previous alert amount. To receive notifications before your spending reaches that amount, edit the alert and add lower thresholds.