Account daily limit vs. campaign daily budget: two things with almost the same name

“I don't want more than X spent per day.” ChatGPT Ads has two tools for that, and they're constantly confused. One applies per campaign, the other to the whole ad account — and the second one comes with conditions not every account meets.

The campaign daily budget

Every campaign has either a lifetime budget or a daily budget. The daily budget caps that one campaign's spend per day, with a minimum of 15 in account currency. It's available for every account, you set it when creating or editing the campaign in Chatvertise, and you can change it anytime. If three campaigns run with a daily budget of 50 each, up to 150 can be spent per day.

The account-wide daily limit

The ad account's spend limit caps the total across all campaigns. It lives at account level and has two prerequisites: the API key must belong to an owner or admin of the ad account, and the account needs invoice billing (postpaid). If either is missing, the API answers with a permission error — Chatvertise then shows an honest message on the Ad account page instead of a form that leads nowhere.

What the account limit can do when it's available

• A daily rule with an amount, optionally with a start and end date.
• Live values: spent today, remaining, next reset.
• Dated spend windows that OpenAI has set for the account are displayed — they can only be edited in the Ads Manager.
• Changes carry a revision number so two people don't overwrite each other.

Which tool when

For steering individual campaigns, and for all accounts without invoice billing: campaign daily budget. As a safety net over everything, when several people or automation rules work on the account and the account meets the prerequisites: account limit in addition. An automation rule “spend over 1 day above threshold → pause” is the practical substitute for everyone else.