AI Automation Cost: Why $0.12 Per Run Can Become $12,000 at Scale

The Run All example needs a budget rule for work already admitted, not only a running total of completed charges. With many concurrent prospects, every worker can observe remaining budget and launch its six paid searches before the reported spend catches up.

I would reserve a conservative per-job allowance at admission, account for in-flight reservations, and reconcile against actual usage when a job terminates. The stop test should launch several workers near the threshold and check the total committed exposure. That makes the maximum acceptable spend meaningful under concurrency rather than a warning that fires after the queue has already committed more work.