# Usage and AI budget

> How AI usage is calculated, budget warnings and top-ups, and ways to use less.

AI usage in Specify is managed as a **monthly AI budget per workspace**. Every task that uses AI, including chat, document generation, automations, and knowledge search, draws from the same budget.

## Check your usage

See this month's usage period and AI budget usage under **Settings** → **Plans & Billing** → **Usage**. Usage also appears in the sidebar account menu.

<Screenshot name="settings-usage" alt="The Usage page showing this month's usage period, unlimited documents, and an AI Budget usage bar" />

- Usage is scoped to the current workspace. Personal and team workspace budgets are separate.
- Usage resets at the end of each monthly usage period.

## How usage is calculated

Each request's actual cost is calculated from the token prices of the model used and deducted from the budget. The basis is **actual token usage**, not credit multipliers or request counts.

- Usage grows with more expensive models, higher reasoning effort, and reading many long documents. For per-model prices, see [Models overview](/en/models/overview).
- When the same content is read repeatedly, caching applies and input costs drop significantly.
- For GPT models, when a single request's input exceeds 272,000 tokens, that request's price goes up (2× for input, 1.5× for output).
- Knowledge search also uses a small amount of usage.

## Budget by plan

Higher plans come with a larger monthly AI budget.

| Plan | AI usage |
| --- | --- |
| Free | Basic AI usage |
| Pro | More AI usage than the Free plan |
| Max | 5× the AI usage of Pro |
| Team | A shared pool where the team uses the per-seat budget together |
| Enterprise | Customized for your organization |

For exact limits and prices, see the [pricing page](https://specify.app/en/pricing).

## Warnings and top-ups

- A warning appears when you've used 70% and 90% of the budget.
- When the budget is used up, an **AI budget exhausted** banner appears, and you can add usage with **Top up $5**. Top-up credits are deducted only after the base budget is used up.
- Even with a remaining balance, each run has round and time limits, so a task may finish only partially.

## Ways to use less

1. **Default to GPT-6 Luna.** The least expensive model is enough for search, summaries, and short questions.
2. **Raise reasoning effort only when needed.** **Low** or **Medium** is enough for most document work.
3. **Narrow your questions.** Specifying targets with document names or `@` mentions reduces unnecessary searching and reading.
4. **Start a new conversation instead of continuing a long one.** The longer a conversation gets, the more each request has to read.
5. **Review automation frequency.** Switch automations that don't need to run daily to a weekly schedule.