Quotas and limits

Akua uses four types of limits to protect your account, keep costs predictable, and ensure fair access for all users. For a full comparison of what each plan includes, see plans and pricing →.

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Resource quotas

Resource quotas cap the total number of resources you can have at any time. When you reach the limit, new creation requests are rejected until you delete an existing resource or increase your limit — deleting a resource releases occupancy and lets you create another one up to your current limit. Quotas are enforced per user, not per workspace. If you are a member of multiple workspaces, your usage across all of them counts toward a single limit. Creating a new workspace does not give you additional resources.

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The one-time managed-VM trial

Separately from ongoing resource quotas, every stable Akua account is eligible for exactly one free Akua-managed VM, ever. This is a lifetime grant, not an occupancy count and not a monthly allowance:

• The trial is consumed the first time you successfully create a free Akua-managed machine, regardless of which workspace or organization you used.
• The trial machine’s 7-day lifetime (see pricing) is how long that specific machine runs, not an interval the trial resets on.
• Deleting the trial machine, its cluster, workspace, or organization releases the occupied slot but never restores the trial. Recreating a workspace or organization does not issue a new one.
• Paid Akua-managed capacity (Pro, Enterprise) and bring-your-own-cloud (BYOM) machines are separate products: they do not consume or check the trial, so using Pro or BYOM never “spends” your one-time trial, and having already used the trial never blocks paid or BYOM capacity.
• Other free-usage meters, such as daily code executions, use their own recurring period and may reset monthly independently of this lifetime trial.

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Current limits

For the per-plan numbers (managed clusters, machines, CPU, memory, machine lifetime), see the canonical plan comparison on the pricing page →. This page covers the quota model itself; pricing covers what each tier includes.

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Check your quotas

Use the API to see your current usage and limits. The response includes each metric’s name, current usage, limit, and remaining capacity. Metric names contain a forward slash (for example, compute/machines). URL-encode the slash as %2F when using the single-metric endpoint. To include concurrency quotas (which are per-cluster), pass a cluster_id query parameter.

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Concurrency limits

Concurrency limits cap how many operations of the same type can be in progress at the same time. Unlike resource quotas (which count what you own), concurrency limits count what is currently launching.

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Machine provisioning

Akua limits the number of machines that can provision simultaneously for a single cluster. If a cluster already has machines launching, additional requests are queued and retried automatically. This prevents scenarios where repeated provisioning failures create a wave of requests that consume resources without producing healthy machines. Once a machine finishes launching and becomes ready, its slot opens up for the next machine in the queue.

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Failure backoff

If machine provisioning fails repeatedly for a cluster, Akua automatically backs off with increasing wait times between retries. This avoids overloading a provider that is already struggling and reduces unnecessary costs. The backoff follows an exponential pattern: 30 seconds, then 1 minute, 2 minutes, up to a maximum of 5 minutes between retries. Backoff resets when provisioning succeeds or the instance type offering changes (for example, after a plan upgrade).

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Rate limits

Akua rate-limits cloud provider API calls to stay within provider quotas. This is handled transparently; you do not need to configure anything. If machines take slightly longer to provision during high demand, the rate limiter is spacing requests to avoid provider throttling.

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Bring your own cloud key (BYOM)

Machines provisioned with your own cloud provider API key (BYOM) are not subject to resource quotas (machine count, CPU, memory). You pay the provider directly, so Akua does not limit the total number of machines. Concurrency limits and rate limits still apply to BYOM machines. These protect your cluster and cloud provider account from provisioning storms regardless of billing arrangement.

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Increasing your limits

There are three ways to increase your resource limits:

• Upgrade to Pro: higher limits for all metrics. See plans and pricing →.
• Bring your own key: bypass resource quotas entirely by using your own cloud provider API key.
• Enterprise overrides: custom per-workspace or per-user limits set by the Akua team. Contact us if you need limits beyond what Pro offers.

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