Budgets & Caps

Budgets and caps are the governors that keep lead flow inside the boundaries a customer (or you) has agreed to. Caps limit how many leads can be bought; budgets limit how much can be spent. Both are evaluated continuously, and a bid is only eligible to win a lead when every applicable limit has headroom.

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Two levels: customer and bid

Limits exist at two scopes:

• Customer-level — Applies across all of a customer’s bidding activity. Useful for account-wide guardrails (e.g., “this customer can spend at most $10,000 per month”).
• Bid-level — Applies only to a specific bid (one lead type in one location). Useful for fine-grained control (e.g., “cap this auto-insurance bid at 50 leads per day”).

A bid has to clear both its own limits and its customer’s limits to win a lead. Whichever is most restrictive wins.

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Two dimensions: caps vs. budgets

Both dimensions come in three interval flavors: daily, weekly, and monthly. You can configure any combination, including all six at once.

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Evaluating limits at once

Every limit you configure is checked simultaneously on every auction. A lead only flows to a customer when:

• The customer’s daily, weekly, and monthly lead caps all have room for one more lead
• The customer’s daily, weekly, and monthly budgets can all cover the bid amount
• The bid’s daily, weekly, and monthly lead caps all have room
• The bid’s daily, weekly, and monthly budgets can all cover the bid amount

The first limit to exhaust wins. If a bid has a daily cap of 10 and a daily budget of $500 with bids at$40 each, the cap trips first (10 leads × $40 =$400, under budget). If the bid was $80, the budget would trip first (6 ×$80 = $480, under cap; 7th lead would push past$500).

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Reset intervals

• Daily — Resets at midnight UTC
• Weekly — Resets at the start of the UTC week (Monday 00:00 UTC)
• Monthly — Resets at the start of the UTC month

Resets are calendar-based, not rolling. A lead assigned at 23:59 UTC counts against the daily cap for one minute before the counter clears.

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What counts toward caps and budgets

Caps and budgets only count leads assigned through bidding. Leads a customer purchases directly from the marketplace don’t count—that’s why these are sometimes called “bidding limits.” The marketplace is a separate purchase channel that draws from the same wallet but doesn’t flow through the bidding system. Returned leads also don’t reduce consumption. Once a lead is assigned, it counts against caps and budgets; returning it credits the wallet but doesn’t free up cap headroom.

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How limits affect status

Limits roll up into the statuses that drive whether a bid or customer is competing.

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Bid status impact

See Bidding → Bid statuses for the full display-status breakdown.

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Customer status impact

Caps and budgets do not change a customer’s display status. The customer’s display status reflects operational state and wallet funding only. When a customer hits a cap or budget, the effect shows up on each of their bids—every bid flips to Capped or Exhausted and stops competing. The customer themselves can still show as Active; they’re just not receiving leads until the constraint resets. If you’re trying to diagnose why a customer isn’t getting leads despite showing Active, check the bid list for Capped or Exhausted rows.

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Leaving a limit blank

Every limit is optional. Leaving a field blank means “no limit” for that dimension. A customer with only a monthly budget set will have unlimited daily and weekly spend (up to that monthly ceiling) and unlimited lead counts.

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Recovering from exhausted state

Exhausted bids and customers recover automatically:

• Cap exhaustion resolves when the interval resets.
• Budget exhaustion resolves when the interval resets.
• Funding exhaustion (separate from budgets—see Bidding → Bid statuses) resolves when the customer’s wallet is topped up.

No manual intervention is required to bring a bid back online once the underlying condition clears.