Google Cloud Budgets now offers generally available spend caps to protect workloads from runaway costs without resource deletion. This release introduces programmability, real-time visibility, and automated guardrails. The new spend caps offer automation through a new API, allowing programmatic enforcement of financial boundaries. Real-time visibility is enhanced with live cost reports, which trigger within minutes for AI services, providing immediate context for breaches. Automated monthly resets eliminate the need for manual cap lifting, though a manual override option remains. Best practices include targeting non-production environments first with strict caps. Configuring alerts wisely by ensuring correct role assignments is crucial. It’s also important to understand that fixed costs like Provisioned Throughput are not halted by spend caps, only pay-as-you-go and CUD-covered requests. Spend caps integrate with Early Anomalies Detection for a comprehensive defense playbook. This dual-pronged approach offers predictive monitoring and financial enforcement. Early Anomalies focus on spotting cost spikes, while spend caps provide absolute protection. Users can start setting spend caps via the Google Cloud Billing Console and integrate programmatic guardrails using the new spend caps API documentation.