Compute User Limits

With Compute User Limits, you can set daily or monthly budgets for individual users in your organization and manage their access to New Relic resources based on compute consumption. Each budget tracks core compute (core CCUs) and advanced compute (advanced CCUs) as separate meters. When a user reaches their allocated budget for a meter, you can block their access to the associated resources until the end of the budget period or until you increase their budget.

It also simplifies budget management at scale with a global user budget that applies to all users, so you don't need to configure a budget for every user individually. For users with specific needs, you can create custom override budgets.

Use Compute User Limits to do the following:

• Control compute costs by limiting per-user consumption
• Monitor user-level compute consumption
• Maintain visibility into user compute usage patterns across your organization
• Manage user compute budgets across a large organization

Key capabilities

Two budget types are available:

• Global user budget: Set a default budget that applies to all users in your organization.
• Custom override budgets: Assign specific budgets to individual users who need higher or lower limits than the global budget.

For both budget types, configure the following per meter:

• Core CCU limit: Set as a percentage of your organization-level compute budget, with the equivalent CCU value calculated automatically. Choose Block CCU usage or Do not block CCU usage as the limit type for this meter.
• Advanced CCU limit: Set as a percentage of your organization-level compute budget, with the equivalent CCU value calculated automatically. Choose Block CCU usage or Do not block CCU usage as the limit type for this meter.

Budget tracking only applies when you configure a global budget or custom override budgets.

If you've configured a global budget, all users automatically receive that budget. If you've only created custom override budgets without a global budget, users without custom budgets have unrestricted access.

If you need to manage usage by New Relic Autopilot, please use our Autopilot compute limits feature instead.

User roles and permissions

The following table summarizes what each role can do.

How user limits work

User limits track each user's compute consumption across two independent meters: core compute (core CCUs) and advanced compute (advanced CCUs). When you assign a budget to a user, their compute activity counts toward the appropriate meter. Each meter has its own budget value and limit type.

For example, if a user has a 10,000 core CCU budget and a 5,000 advanced CCU budget, standard compute activity such as running queries and refreshing dashboards counts toward the core CCU limit, and advanced compute activity such as Ask AI, Live Archives, and MCP counts toward the advanced CCU limit.

When a user reaches their allocated budget for a meter, the configured limit type for that meter takes effect.

Core and advanced compute meters

Core compute (core CCUs) covers dashboards, query builder, and API calls. Advanced compute (advanced CCUs) covers features like Live Archives and AI-powered features.

When a user's core CCU budget is exhausted and the limit type is set to Block CCU usage, they lose access to the following:

• Dashboards
• Query builder
• API calls

When a user's advanced CCU budget is exhausted and the limit type is set to Block CCU usage, they lose access to the following:

• Ask AI (V1 and V2)
• Live Archives (the Query Live Archives button and the Use live archives toggle in query builder)
• MCP
• Errors Inbox (Explain Error and Generate Insights)

The following advanced CCU-consuming products are not supported by this Compute User Limits feature and remain accessible even when a user's advanced CCU budget reaches 100%:

• Pipeline Control
• Unlimited Cardinality
• Transaction 360
• Security RX
• New Relic AI Knowledge
• Autopilot

Budget frequency

When you create a budget, you choose whether it resets daily or monthly. The right choice depends on your users' work patterns and how tightly you need to control costs.

The following table compares monthly and daily budgets:

Choose a monthly budget if any of the following apply:

• Your users have variable day-to-day usage that averages out over a billing period — for example, developers who run intensive queries at the end of a sprint but have light usage otherwise
• You want the budget period to align with your billing cycle
• You want only one reset per month

Choose a daily budget if any of the following apply:

• You want to limit how much a runaway query or script can consume in a single day
• Your users have consistent day-to-day usage and you want a fixed daily limit
• You want a shorter recovery window: A user blocked under a daily budget regains access the next day, rather than waiting until the end of the month

Budget notifications

Notifications fire independently for each compute meter. In-app notifications fire at all four thresholds; email notifications fire at 75% and 100% only.

For example, a user with a 100,000 core CCU budget and a 200,000 advanced CCU budget receives core CCU notifications at 50,000; 75,000; 95,000; and 100,000 core CCUs, and separate advanced CCU notifications at 100,000; 150,000; 190,000; and 200,000 advanced CCUs. Email notifications are sent at the 75% and 100% thresholds for each meter.

Budget enforcement

As an organization manager, you configure limit types independently for each compute meter. This means you can, for example, apply Block CCU usage to a user's core compute while setting Do not block CCU usage for their advanced compute, or apply the same limit type to both.

For core compute, choose one of the following:

• Block CCU usage: When a user exhausts their budget, notify them and block access to Query Builder, Dashboards and API calls: running queries, refreshing dashboards, and making API calls.
• Do not block CCU usage: When a user exhausts their budget, notify them but don't block access to any CCU-consuming products. This option maintains full platform access but doesn't prevent overages.

For advanced compute, choose one of the following:

• Block CCU usage: When a user exhausts their budget, notify them and block access such as: Ask AI, Live Archives, MCP, and Errors Inbox.
• Do not block CCU usage: When a user exhausts their budget, notify them but don't block access to CCU-consuming actions. This option maintains full platform access but doesn't prevent overages.

When blocked, users see a screen that says they've used their budget for the period and that they can contact an organization manager with any questions.

Before you begin

When you create any budget, you configure four settings. Reviewing these before you start helps you make the right choices in the setup wizard.

Set up a global user budget

If your organization spans multiple New Relic organizations, sign in to each one separately to create and manage user limits for its users.

Set up custom override budgets

Create custom override budgets for users who need different limits than the global budget. Use this approach when onboarding a team or applying a uniform limit to a group without configuring each user individually.

After you create them, custom override budgets appear in the user budgets table as separate line items. You can update them individually or use the Group by dropdown to view and manage users who share the same allocation, limit type, and frequency.

Manage user limits

View budget consumption

Organization managers see the Global user budget card at the top of the Compute Budgets page. The card shows the configured core CCU and advanced CCU amounts, the percentage allocated per user, and the limit type for each meter.

Below the card, the User budgets table shows custom override budgets with the following columns:

Use Group by > Allocation, limit, and frequency to cluster users who share the same budget configuration. Each group header summarizes the configuration, for example: Core CCU 45,000 CCU · Block | Advanced CCU 100,000 CCU · Do not block | Monthly.

Organization managers can do the following:

• View all custom override budgets in the table with full details
• Access a three-dot menu (⋯) next to each budget. The menu includes the following options:
  • View: See detailed budget information, consumption, and trends
  • Edit: Modify budget settings
  • Delete: Remove the budget

Read-only users can do the following:

• See their own budget as a line item in the table, whether it's a custom override or global budget
• Access only the View option from the three-dot menu

Read-only users can't see other users' budgets or use Edit or Delete.

Budget details view

When you view a budget (available to all users for their own budget), you can see:

• Current core CCU and advanced CCU consumption
• Percentage of each budget used
• Consumption trends for the period
• Blocking status at 100% for each meter
• Notification status

Adjust budgets

As an organization manager, you can modify budgets at any time:

• Edit existing budgets: Update budget amounts, frequency, or limit types for a single user, or use the group view to update the budget for all users in a group at once
• Increase a user's budget: Restore access to blocked users or provide additional capacity
• Decrease budgets: Adjust budget amounts for the current and future budget periods
• Delete budgets: Delete both global and custom override budgets. When you delete a custom override budget, the user automatically falls back to the global user budget (if you've configured one).

Changes to budgets take effect within approximately 15 minutes.

Handle blocked users

When a user is blocked due to budget consumption, they can do the following:

• See a message that says they've used their budget for the period
• View their budget details to check consumption
• Contact you to request a budget increase

To restore a blocked user's access, choose one of the following options:

• Increase their budget. See Adjust budgets.
• Wait until the budget resets at the start of the next budget period. See Budget frequency.

Common scenarios

When do budgets reset? It depends on the frequency you selected when setting up the budget:

• Monthly: Budgets reset at the start of each calendar month (UTC).
• Daily: Budgets reset at the start of each calendar day (UTC).

What happens to in-progress queries when a user reaches 100% of their core CCU budget? Running queries complete. The block only prevents new queries, dashboard loads, and API calls from starting after blocking enforcement. See note above about consumption data reporting delays.

What happens when a user reaches 100% of their advanced CCU budget? If the advanced CCU limit type is set to Block CCU usage, users lose access to Ask AI, Live Archives, MCP, and Errors Inbox. If the limit type is Do not block CCU usage, users continue to have full access but receive notifications.

What happens to a user when I delete their custom override budget? The user automatically falls back to the global user budget if you've configured one. If no global budget exists, the user has unrestricted access.

What happens to users who don't have a budget assigned? Users without a budget assigned have unrestricted access to dashboards, query builder, API calls, and AI features.

How quickly do budget changes take effect? Budget changes take effect within approximately 15 minutes.

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