AI usage limits

What is the monthly AI limit?

UrCartBuddy uses AI for several features — sorting your lists, importing items from photos and recipes, transcribing voice commands, titling attachments, and powering the WhatsApp and Telegram bots. Each of these calls a paid AI provider, so we cap the AI spend each account can incur per calendar month to keep things sustainable while UrCartBuddy is in early access.

The default cap is 60p per calendar month. The cap resets at 00:00 UTC on the 1st of every month. On a shared list, the AI spend counts toward the list owner's cap; collaborators with their own accounts pay against their own cap.

We'll show a warning toast in the web app, and a one-line note in WhatsApp and Telegram replies, when you've used 90% and 98% of your monthly allowance — once per threshold per month, so we don't nag.

What pauses when the cap is reached?

All AI-powered features pause until the start of the next calendar month:

• Magic Sort — automatic categorisation and ordering of items
• AI Import — pasting a list of items and having them turned into individual entries
• Voice transcription — voice commands on the web app
• Attachment titling — auto-generated short titles for photos, receipts, and PDFs you attach
• WhatsApp & Telegram bots — natural-language conversations and recipe imports
• Recipe import — extracting ingredients from recipe URLs and dish searches

Everything that doesn't need AI keeps working: viewing and editing your lists, adding and checking items by hand, sharing lists, archiving, attachments uploaded by you, and confirming or cancelling a pending action in WhatsApp or Telegram with a simple yes or no.

Need a higher cap?

If your usage is regularly bumping up against the cap, get in touch on the contact page and we'll review your account.