Dev.to
6/19/2026
Controlling AI Spend at Scale: Per-Developer and Team Budget Gates for Coding Agents
Original: We Let 40 Engineers Loose With Coding Agents. The Bill Was Brutal.
Short summary
A team deploying Claude Code across 40 engineers saw AI costs spike to $20K/month with zero visibility. They deployed LiteLLM as a proxy gateway with per-developer ($100/mo) and team budgets ($2K/mo), model-level access controls, and cost attribution by project. Budget enforcement with 50% alerts prevents runaway spend.
- •Uncontrolled coding agent usage caused AI spend to jump 340% to $20K/month across 40 engineers
- •LiteLLM proxy gateway provides per-developer caps, team budgets, and model-level access controls without SDK changes
- •Budget enforcement with alerts enables spend attribution by team/project while preventing cost overages
Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.
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