Plan Enforcement

Enforcement model

Lamba applies plan boundaries with two layers:

• Soft limits: warning state and guidance before blocking.
• Hard limits: protective enforcement for reliability and fairness.

402 as business state

When a hard limit is exceeded, APIs can return:

{
  "error": "PLAN_LIMIT_EXCEEDED",
  "limit": "mau",
  "allowed": 5000,
  "current": 5001,
  "plan": "free",
  "message": "Plan limit exceeded. Upgrade to continue."
}

Treat this as deterministic product state, not a transient retry.

Typical control flow

1. Receive 402.
2. Show clear upgrade/reduce-usage path.
3. Stop retry loops.
4. Alert internal owners on sustained limit pressure.

Environment separation

• Production usage drives billing/enforcement.
• Test/sandbox usage is isolated for safe integration work.

Operational guidance

• Define internal warning thresholds below hard limit.
• Review usage trend weekly during growth periods.
• Keep customer-facing copy for MAU and limit semantics consistent.

Related docs

• Pricing limits: /docs/pricing/limits
• Error reference: /docs/reference/errors