Usage limits
Last updated: October 26, 2026
A usage limit caps how many Creative Units each member can spend in a workspace over a day, a week or a month. Use limits to budget a team's spend, to see who is close to their share, and to let people ask for more when a deadline needs it.
How it works
A limit is always per member: it caps what each person spends, not what a team spends together. Every member is metered on their own, in each workspace separately, so what someone spends in one workspace never counts against a limit in another.
A limit has four parts:
An amount of Creative Units.
A period under Per: day, week or month. Periods are counted in UTC: a day from midnight, a week from Monday, a month from the 1st.
What happens under When it's used up: Block or Warn only.
Warn at (% of the limit): how far into the limit members are warned. It starts at 80%.
Usage limits are part of the Enterprise plan. A child workspace whose parent is on Enterprise can use them too.
Where a limit comes from
Group limit
Set on a group's Usage limit tab, it caps each member of the group. It is the usual way to budget a team. See Set a usage limit for a group.
Own limit
Set for one member on the Usage Limits page. A member's own limit for a period replaces their group limits of that period, whether it is higher or lower. Approving a member's request for more also gives them an own limit. See Set a usage limit for one member.
Assigned group
A group from a parent workspace that is assigned to a child workspace carries its limit there: it meters what its members spend in the child, not in the parent. See Give a group access to a child workspace.
When several limits apply
Limits of different periods all apply together. A member with a daily limit and a monthly limit must stay inside both, and is blocked by whichever runs out first.
Within one period, a member in several groups that set a limit for it is held to the most generous of those limits: a warning-only limit counts as more generous than a blocking one, and between two blocking limits the larger wins. A group that sets no limit for the period does not lift the others. Their own limit for that period, if they have one, replaces all of these.
The Usage Limits page shows which limit each member is held to, and where it comes from.
Block or warn
Block
Once a member reaches the limit, nothing more that spends Creative Units starts for them in that workspace until the period resets. That covers generations, workflow runs, the Layer agent and training. A run that would take them past the limit is refused before it starts, and the message says how much they have left.
Warn only
Members are warned as they near and pass the limit, and keep working. Use it to make spend visible without stopping anyone, for example while you learn what a team needs.
What members see
When a member passes the Warn at share of a limit, a notice appears in the sidebar (Nearing your usage limit), and a banner appears where they generate: in chat, in the tools and when they run a workflow. Once a blocking limit is reached, the notice reads Usage limit reached and says when the limit resets. Both have Ask for more.
Members see each limit that applies to them, what they have used of it and when it resets, in their account settings under My Usage Limits.
Requests for more
A member who is under a limit can ask the workspace's admins to raise it, with a reason. Admins see the request on the Usage Limits page, where they approve it (with the amount asked for or another) or decline it with a note. Approving gives the member their own limit for that period. A member has at most one request waiting in a workspace, and can withdraw it. See Ask for a higher usage limit and Answer a request for a higher usage limit.
What it means for you
Budget teams with groups, people with own limits. Put a team's budget on its group, and give an own limit only to the person whose work differs, such as a lead running large batches.
An own limit can lower a cap, too. It replaces the group's limit for that period, so it is also how you hold one contractor below the rest of their team.
Check before you cap. The dialog that sets a limit shows what it would have meant for each member last period and so far this one, so you can see who it would have blocked.
Removing a member removes their own limits. If they rejoin, they start from their groups' limits.
Spend confirmation is different. The agent's spend confirmation asks before one expensive job; a usage limit caps what a member spends over a period. See Control the Layer agent and its spending.