Configuring spending notifications in IBM Cloud

Learn how to set up email spending notifications for your IBM Cloud Pay-As-You-Go or Subscription account, including total account and specific service spending.

You receive notifications when you reach 80%, 90%, and 100% of the spending thresholds that you specify. As your needs change, you can edit the spending threshold. If you're interested, you can use our latest enhancement to select up to 10 users from your account to receive notifications about the service.

Lite accounts can't enable spending notifications because they can use only no-cost Lite services, so you never have any spending. After you upgrade to a Pay-As-You-Go or Subscription account, you can set spending thresholds. For more information, see Account types.

Setting notifications in the IBM Cloud® console

To set up your notifications in the IBM Cloud® console:

  1. Go to Manage > Billing and usage, and select Spending notifications.
  2. Set the Enable option to on for the specific service area to enable email notifications.
  3. Click the Edit option from the Actions icon Actions icon menu.
  4. Add email recipients. You can select up to 10 users from your account to receive email notifications about a service.
  5. Enter the amount to set a spending threshold. The amount is in the currency of the account.
  6. Click Save to save your changes.

Setting notifications for the individual services

You can also set spending notifications for individual services in the IBM Cloud® console:

  1. Go to Manage > Billing and usage, and select Spending notifications.
  2. Click Create from the Add a service section.
  3. Enter the service name or search from the list to add the service.
  4. Add email recipients. Select up to 10 users from your account to receive email notifications about a service.
  5. Enter the amount to set a spending threshold. The amount is in the currency of the account.
  6. Click Save to save your changes.
  7. Set the Enable option to on for the specific service area to enable email notifications.

Notifications don't include costs for classic infrastructure services.