Get started
Create your first budget with the OpenStack CLI, so that Budgets emails you when a project has spent 80% of its monthly amount.
This page takes you from nothing to a monthly budget that emails you when your project has spent 80% of it. It takes about five minutes, most of which is waiting for a confirmation email.
Before you begin
You need:
- The
openstackCLI, signed in to the project you want to watch. Set up the CLI if you have not already. - An email address you can read.
1. Install the Budgets commands
pip install vexxhost-budgetclient2. Create an email channel
A notification channel is where alerts go. Create one for your email address:
openstack budget channel create finance --type email --address finance@example.com+------------+--------------------------------------+
| Field | Value |
+------------+--------------------------------------+
| id | 3f9c1e7a-2b4d-4c6e-8a1f-5d7b9e2c4a6f |
| name | finance |
| project_id | a6f1c2d93b8e4f07b5d4e2c1a9f8e7d6 |
| type | email |
| status | pending_confirmation |
| url | None |
| address | finance@example.com |
| created_by | 4c8e2f1a9b7d4e6f8a3c5b1d7e9f2a4c |
| created_at | 2026-10-07T14:02:11Z |
+------------+--------------------------------------+Budgets sends a confirmation message to the address. Open it, follow the link, and select
Confirm. Until you do, the channel stays pending_confirmation and receives no alerts.
3. Create the budget
Create a monthly budget of 1000 with one threshold at 80% of actual spending, sent to the channel you created:
openstack budget create team-monthly \
--amount 1000 \
--period monthly \
--threshold name=warn,value=80,channel=finance \
-c id -c name -c amount -c currency -c period+----------+--------------------------------------+
| Field | Value |
+----------+--------------------------------------+
| id | c7e1a5b3-9d2f-4e8c-a6b4-1f3d5e7c9a2b |
| name | team-monthly |
| amount | 1000 |
| currency | USD |
| period | monthly |
+----------+--------------------------------------+The currency is the one your costs are reported in, so you do not set it.
4. Check the budget
Budgets checks each budget about once an hour. After the first check, budget show reports what
the project has spent this month:
openstack budget show team-monthly -c window -c actual_spend -c threshold_states+------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Field | Value |
+------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| window | 2026-10-01T00:00:00Z - 2026-11-01T00:00:00Z |
| actual_spend | 248.731250000000 |
| threshold_states | name='warn', observed='248.731250000000', state='ok', target_amount='800' |
+------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+The warn threshold is ok while spending stays under 800. When it reaches 800, the state
changes to alarm and Budgets emails finance@example.com.
Next steps
- Add a threshold that warns when the month is forecast to go over budget. See Thresholds.
- Send alerts to chat or your own systems with a webhook.
- Learn how periods, spending and alerts fit together in Budgets concepts.