# Budget governor The governor is a monthly guard that the operator of ZeroLog sets, not you. It adds up what the whole service spends on models this month. Once that total passes a threshold of the monthly budget, paid requests move to a cheaper model, so chats **keep going** instead of stopping outright. It is off until the operator turns it on and sets a monthly budget. The cheaper model is the one the operator named, or else the cheapest one available. *The month, watched as a whole* Past the monthly threshold The model you picked A cheaper model - From then on, paid requests are answered by a cheaper model, and the chat carries on. - Refusing the request. The downgrade happens instead of this, unless the operator has also switched on a hard stop at the full budget. ## Every downgrade leaves a line The governor writes down each downgrade with the reason behind it. So when an answer comes back looking different from the one you expected, there is a line that explains it. ## What it does not do It does not watch a single run or measure how fast a run spends, and you cannot set or see it from your account. Your own limit is your credit: at zero, paid models stop. See [Spend limits](https://zerolog.ch/docs/limits). How unattended runs behave: [/goal and /ultracode](https://zerolog.ch/unattended-agents). ## What the budget governor does to a paid request Mermaid source of the diagram on this page: ```mermaid %% Budget governor: one paid request. Facts from server/governor.js (evaluate). flowchart TB r["A paid request
for the model you picked"] h{"Hard stop on and
monthly budget used up?"} refuse["Request refused"] t{"Service-wide spend this month
past the threshold?"} same["Answered by the model
you picked"] down["Answered by a cheaper model
the chat carries on"]:::hot log["Downgrade logged
with the reason"] r --> h h -->|yes| refuse h -->|no| t t -->|no| same t -->|yes| down --> log classDef hot stroke:#8f7ac9 ```