BerriAI/litellm · error · HTTPException

Budget enforcement unavailable: the budget reservation could

Error message

Budget enforcement unavailable: the budget reservation could not be written to the spend counter backend, and fail_closed_budget_enforcement is enabled, so the request was rejected to avoid exceeding the configured budget. Retry shortly.

What it means

Error "Budget enforcement unavailable: the budget reservation could not be written to the spend counter backend, and fail_closed_budget_enforcement is enabled, so the request was rejected to avoid exceeding the configured budget. Retry shortly." thrown in BerriAI/litellm.

Source

Thrown at litellm/proxy/spend_tracking/budget_reservation.py:71

class _CounterReservationUnavailable(Exception):
    def __init__(
        self,
        touched_counter: bool = False,
        counter_invalidated: bool = False,
    ) -> None:
        self.touched_counter = touched_counter
        self.counter_invalidated = counter_invalidated
        super().__init__("Counter reservation unavailable")


def _raise_reservation_unavailable(counter_key: str) -> NoReturn:
    verbose_proxy_logger.warning(
        "fail_closed_budget_enforcement: rejecting request — budget reservation for %s could not be written",
        counter_key,
    )
    raise HTTPException(
        status_code=status.HTTP_503_SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE,
        detail=(
            "Budget enforcement unavailable: the budget reservation could not "
            "be written to the spend counter backend, and "
            "fail_closed_budget_enforcement is enabled, so the request was "
            "rejected to avoid exceeding the configured budget. Retry shortly."
        ),
    )


def get_reserved_counter_keys(budget_reservation: dict | None) -> set:
    if not budget_reservation:
        return set()
    entries: Final = budget_reservation.get("entries") or []
    return {
        entry["counter_key"] for entry in entries if isinstance(entry, dict) and entry.get("counter_key") is not None
    }

View on GitHub (pinned to 77b7c6c40c)

Solutions

1. Check the spend counter backend (Redis/DB) connectivity; retry shortly once reservations can be written.
2. If fail-closed behavior is not desired, disable fail_closed_budget_enforcement in config.

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at litellm/proxy/spend_tracking/budget_reservation.py:71 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of BerriAI/litellm@77b7c6c40c (2026-08-18). Data as JSON: /api/errors/d69b1171b71ecdac. Report an issue: GitHub.