⚙️ Send AI budget overspend alerts with Alephant AI Gateway and Gmail
⚡ 39 views · ⚙️ DevOps & CI/CD
Description
Quick overview
This workflow runs every 6 hours to check an Alephant AI Gateway virtual key’s budget usage and, when live usage meets or exceeds the threshold, sends a detailed overspend alert email via Gmail.
How it works
- Runs every 6 hours on a schedule.
- Requests the current virtual key budget status from Alephant AI Gateway, including usage percentage, spend, and circuit-breaker mode.
- Checks whether the data source is live and the budget usage percentage is greater than or equal to the configured threshold.
- If the threshold is exceeded, sets the alert recipient email address.
- Formats an email containing spend, remaining budget, budget window, reset time, and the configured circuit-breaker behavior.
- Sends the alert email to the configured recipient using Gmail.
Setup
- Install and configure the Alephant Analytics community node (@alephantai/n8n-nodes-alephant-analytics) in your n8n instance and add your Alephant Virtual Key credentials to the budget status step.
- Add a Gmail credential and ensure the Gmail account is allowed to send mail from n8n.
- Update the recipient email address and adjust the threshold value (it ships set to 1 for testing) to your desired alert level before activating the workflow.
Requirements
- Alephant account (free tier works) — https://alephant.io
- A configured budget on your Alephant virtual key (so usage_pct has a limit to measure against)
- Gmail account
Customization
- Change the alert threshold in the “Over Threshold?” node (default 75%) to be more or less sensitive
- Adjust the Schedule Trigger interval for more frequent or less frequent checks
- Swap the Gmail node for Slack, Discord, or Send Email (SMTP) to deliver alerts elsewhere
- Add a second alert at a higher threshold (e.g. 90%) by duplicating the IF + send branch for escalating warnings
Additional info
Note: the threshold in the “Over Threshold?” node ships at 1% for testing so you can verify the alert fires. Change it to 75% (or your preferred level) before relying on it. Alephant is an open-source AI FinOps Gateway that sits between your application and 50+ AI providers, giving you cost control, per-agent budget enforcement, and observability without taking custody of your API keys. Its budget circuit breaker can alert, throttle, or hard-stop a runaway key — this workflow surfaces that status so you know what the gateway will do on its own. Documentation: https://developers.alephant.io Quickstart: https://developers.alephant.io/docs/overview/getting-started/quickstart-guide GitHub: https://github.com/AlephantAI/AIephant-AI-Agent-Gateway
🔗 Nodes Used
Gmail, Schedule Trigger
📥 Import
Download workflow.json and import into n8n:
Workflow menu → Import from File